Pandas: How to check if two DataFrames are equal

Suppose those 2 DataFrames has identical column names.

import pandas as pd

df_a = pd.read_csv("df_a.tsv", sep="\t")
df_a = df_a.set_index("xxx").sort_index()

df_b = pd.read_csv("df_b.tsv", sep="\t")
df_b = df_b.set_index("xxx").sort_index()

>>> df_a.equals(df_b)
>>> True
>>> all(df_a == df_b)
>>> True

• sort_index() is a MUST because DataFrame.equals() is weak in that it won’t compare records with the same index automatically! Instead it seems to compare row-wise brutally.
• df_a == df_b also performs row-wise comparison but if the indices of those 2 DataFrames were not exactly the same (in values and orders), it will throw ValueError: Can only compare identically-labeled DataFrame objects.