Drop one or more columns from the dataset

This is a metadata-only operation and does not remove the data from the underlying storage. In order to remove the data, you must subsequently call compact_files to rewrite the data without the removed columns and then call cleanup_old_versions to remove the old files.

Parameters:

columns : list of str¶

The names of the columns to drop. These can be nested column references (e.g. “a.b.c”) or top-level column names (e.g. “a”).

Examples

>>> import lance
>>> import pyarrow as pa
>>> table = pa.table({"a": [1, 2, 3], "b": ["a", "b", "c"]})
>>> dataset = lance.write_dataset(table, "example")
>>> dataset.drop_columns(["a"])
>>> dataset.to_table().to_pandas()
   b
0  a
1  b
2  c