python - Best practice for passing Pandas DataFrame to functions

Question

I am currently working with a few DataFrames and want to make my code modular. That entails passing DataFrames to functions. I am aware of the mutable nature of DataFrames and some of the 'gotchas' when passing mutable instances to functions. Is there a best practice for DataFrames to the functions? Should I make a copy within the function and then pass it back? Or should I just make changes to df within the function and return None?

Is option 1 or 2 better? Below is basic code to convey the idea:

Option 1:

def test(df):
    df['col1'] = df['col1']+1
    return None

test(df)

Option 2:

def test(main_df):
    df = main_df.copy()
    df['col1'] = df['col1']+1
    return df 

main_df = test(main_df)

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65922241/best-practice-for-passing-pandas-dataframe-to-functions

Answer 1

I use a lot of DataFrame.pipe to organize my code so, I'm going to say option 2. pipe takes and returns a DataFrame and you can chain multiple steps together.

def step1(main_df):
    df = main_df.copy()
    df['col1'] = df['col1']+1
    return df 

def step2(main_df):
    df = main_df.copy()
    df['col1'] = df['col1']+1
    return df 

def setp3(main_df):
    df = main_df.copy()
    df['col1'] = df['col1']+1
    return df 

main_df = (main_df.pipe(step1)
    .pipe(step2)
    .pipe(step3)
)