Abbreviate MultiIndex representation

[tdoughty1]

We are using pandas to do analysis on a moderately large size dataset (10s of millions of events). In the process, we create a MultiIndex object in order to store the data. While I was debugging, I repeatedly ran into an issue where the MultiIndex object tried to print out the entire very long array. I've included code for a short test I did just to confirm the behavior.

Ideally, I think it would be good for the string representation of the MultiIndex object to have similar abbreviation strategy to the Series and DataFrame objects it indexes.

Code Sample, a copy-pastable example if possible

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> index1=range(100)
>>> index2=range(100)
>>> testIndex = pd.MultiIndex.from_arrays([index1, index2])

Expected Output

MultiIndex(levels=[[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99]],
           labels=[[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99], [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99]])

output of pd.show_versions()

INSTALLED VERSIONS
------------------
commit: None
python: 2.7.11.final.0
python-bits: 64
OS: Linux
OS-release: 3.13.0-77-generic
machine: x86_64
processor: x86_64
byteorder: little
LC_ALL: None
LANG: en_US.UTF-8

pandas: 0.17.1
nose: 1.3.7
pip: 8.0.2
setuptools: 18.0.1
Cython: 0.23.4
numpy: 1.10.2
scipy: 0.16.1
statsmodels: 0.6.1
IPython: 4.0.3
sphinx: 1.3.4
patsy: 0.4.0
dateutil: 2.4.2
pytz: 2015.7
blosc: None
bottleneck: None
tables: 3.2.2
numexpr: 2.4.4
matplotlib: 1.5.1
openpyxl: 2.3.2
xlrd: 0.9.4
xlwt: 1.0.0
xlsxwriter: 0.8.2
lxml: 3.5.0
bs4: 4.3.2
html5lib: None
httplib2: 0.9.1
apiclient: 1.4.1
sqlalchemy: 1.0.12
pymysql: None
psycopg2: None
Jinja2: None

[jorisvandenbossche]

@tdoughty1 Thanks for the report

The single index follows the pd.options.display.max_seq_items option (default of 100 items to show), but apparently this setting is not used for a MultiIndex

[jreback]

yes this was noted in #9901

its a pretty straightforward fix to truncate these.

[tdoughty1]

I think I found a similar issue with a pandas.core.internal.BlockManager object that was printed out in our debugging scripts.

[jreback]

the BlockManager doesn't have any special repr. I suppose you could add this on, but in general people shouldn't be messing around there :)

[jreback]

The indexes have a nice well-defined way of doing repr. MultiIndex was never 'fixed' to not print long lines when I fixed procedure.

[tdoughty1]

Ok, thanks. I'm trying to figure out why the Block manager is printing out in the first place right now.

[jreback]

this actually I think is a trivial change in pandas.indexes.multi.MultiIndex._format_attrs