ENH: inconsistent naming convention for read_csv and read_excel column selection · Issue #4988 · pandas-dev/pandas (original) (raw)

read_csv uses the usecols parameter, and the read_excel function uses parse_cols parameter. Both parameter do basically the same thing:

usecols : array-like
    Return a subset of the columns.
    Results in much faster parsing time and lower memory usage.

parse_cols : int or list, default None
    * If None then parse all columns,
    * If int then indicates last column to be parsed
    * If list of ints then indicates list of column numbers to be parsed
    * If string then indicates comma separated list of column names and
      column ranges (e.g. "A:E" or "A,C,E:F")

Also maybe supporting the same thing that parse_cols does in usecol wouldn't be so bad?