Internal `read_excel()` typing for `index_col` is incorrect

[Dr-Irv]

Inside the pandas source, the index_col argument for read_excel() is typed as:

    index_col: int | Sequence[int] | None = ...,

But the docs say that a string is accepted, as shown in the example below.

from pandas import read_excel
print(read_excel("Book1.xlsx"))
print(read_excel("Book1.xlsx", index_col="bar"))

Output:

   foo  bar
0    1    2
1    3    4
     foo
bar     
2      1
4      3

Book1.xlsx

Originally posted by @clo-vis in pandas-dev/pandas-stubs#809 (comment)

[himanshu238]

Hello, Himanshu here. I want try and resolve this issue but as I am new to opens source and to this project so I will start by going through the contributing guidelines but I will require a little assistance because this will be my first issue. Please assist me if possible @Dr-Irv and @lithomas1. Thank you

[Dr-Irv]

Hello, Himanshu here. I want try and resolve this issue but as I am new to opens source and to this project so I will start by going through the contributing guidelines but I will require a little assistance because this will be my first issue. Please assist me if possible @Dr-Irv and @lithomas1. Thank you

Follow the guidelines to get set up. If you need help, best to ask on the slack channel. See https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/development/community.html#community-slack

The right thing to do here is to just make changes with typing declarations for read_excel() and downstream functions/methods that use the index_col argument. You need to add str as an accepted argument type in those places.

[himanshu238]

Thank you for your response @Dr-Irv. I have joined the slack channel and I will start working on this issue. If there is any doubt I will reach out to you and other fellow contributors on slack.

[Dr-Irv]

@himanshu238 it appears someone else picked this up and did the fix. Hope you didn't spend too much time working on it.

[himanshu238]

Okay @Dr-Irv I will look for other issues and try to fix them. Thank you.