What is date_range() in Pandas?

What is date_range() in Pandas?

The date_range() function in Pandas is used to generate a sequence of dates within a specified date range. This is often used to create a time series, which is a series of data points indexed by time.

Here's an example of using the date_range() function in Pandas:

import pandas as pd

# generate a sequence of dates from 2020-01-01 to 2020-01-05
dates = pd.date_range('2020-01-01', '2020-01-05')

# display the dates
print(dates)

This will generate a sequence of 5 dates starting from 2020-01-01 and ending at 2020-01-05.

The output will be:

DatetimeIndex(['2020-01-01', '2020-01-02', '2020-01-03', '2020-01-04',
               '2020-01-05'],
              dtype='datetime64[ns]', freq='D')

You can also specify the frequency of the date range by using the freq parameter.

For example, to generate a sequence of daily dates with a frequency of 2 days, you can do:

# generate a sequence of dates with a frequency of 2 days
dates = pd.date_range('2020-01-01', '2020-01-05', freq='2D')

# display the dates
print(dates)

This will generate a sequence of 3 dates starting from 2020-01-01 and ending at 2020-01-05, with a frequency of 2 days.

The output will be:

DatetimeIndex(['2020-01-01', '2020-01-03', '2020-01-05'], dtype='datetime64[ns]', freq='2D')

You can also use the date_range() function to generate a sequence of dates with a specific time span, rather than a specific end date. For example, to generate a sequence of dates for the next 5 days, you can do:

# generate a sequence of dates for the next 5 days
dates = pd.date_range('today', periods=5)

# display the dates
print(dates)

This will generate a sequence of 5 dates starting from today and ending 5 days from today.

The output will be:

DatetimeIndex(['2022-12-08 15:49:45.660486', '2022-12-09 15:49:45.660486',
               '2022-12-10 15:49:45.660486', '2022-12-11 15:49:45.660486',
               '2022-12-12 15:49:45.660486'],
              dtype='datetime64[ns]', freq='D')