2.12 Aliasing Axis Names

To globally provide aliases for axis names, one can define these 2 functions:

In [1]: def set_axis_alias(cls, axis, alias):
   ...:    if axis not in cls._AXIS_NUMBERS:
   ...:       raise Exception("invalid axis [%s] for alias [%s]" % (axis, alias))
   ...:    cls._AXIS_ALIASES[alias] = axis
   ...: 

In [2]: def clear_axis_alias(cls, axis, alias):
   ...:    if axis not in cls._AXIS_NUMBERS:
   ...:       raise Exception("invalid axis [%s] for alias [%s]" % (axis, alias))
   ...:    cls._AXIS_ALIASES.pop(alias,None)
   ...: 

In [3]: set_axis_alias(pd.DataFrame,'columns', 'myaxis2')

In [4]: df2 = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(3,2),columns=['c1','c2'],index=['i1','i2','i3'])

In [5]: df2.sum(axis='myaxis2')
Out[5]: 
i1    0.186249
i2   -2.644691
i3    1.038897
dtype: float64

In [6]: clear_axis_alias(pd.DataFrame,'columns', 'myaxis2')