to_string() returning None

[PhE]

DataFrame.to_string() is printing directly to console and not returning a string :

>>> import pandas
>>> df = pandas.DataFrame(range(5))
>>> df
   0
0  0
1  1
2  2
3  3
4  4
>>> view_repr = repr(df)
>>> view_to_string = df.to_string()
   0
0  0
1  1
2  2
3  3
4  4
>>> view_repr == view_to_string
False

For large DataFrame, we have to use to_string() to get a tabular view.
But the return value is not set (None) and can't be retrieved :

>>> view_repr
'   0\n0  0\n1  1\n2  2\n3  3\n4  4\n'
>>> view_to_string
>>>

It would be usefull to get a string (or StringIO) returned by DataFrame.to_string()

[wesm]

You can currently pass in a buffer like:

buf = StringIO()
df.to_string(buf=buf)

but I agree with you that returning a string by default would be more useful. So I think in the next release I'll change it to be buf=None by default, in which case a string will be returned, but if a file-like object is passed it will write to that. sound good?

[PhE]

Sorry but I don't get It :

>>> import pandas
>>> df = pandas.DataFrame(range(5))
>>> import StringIO
>>> buf = StringIO.StringIO()
>>> df.to_string(buf=buf)
>>> buf.readlines()
[]

[brentp]

@PhE you probably have to call buf.seek(0) before readlines()

[wesm]

I think you want buf.getvalue() instead of buf.readlines()

[wesm]

I changed the API for to_string to return a string by default. This will take effect in the 0.5 major release

[PhE]

Works fine with .getValue() & .readlines()
Thanks !