Implementation:Eventual Inc Daft DataFrame Show

Knowledge Sources	Daft Daft Docs
Domains	Data_Engineering, Data_Visualization
Last Updated	2026-02-08 00:00 GMT

Overview

Concrete tool for displaying a formatted preview of DataFrame contents to standard output provided by the Daft library.

Description

The show method on Daft's DataFrame class executes enough of the DataFrame to display the first n rows in a formatted table. It is environment-aware: in IPython/Jupyter notebooks, it uses IPython.display for rich rendering (including interactive HTML tables); in plain terminals, it falls back to print. The output includes column names, data types, and configurable formatting options such as column width, alignment, and box-drawing style.

Usage

Use df.show() for visual inspection of DataFrame contents during development and debugging. This is a method on DataFrame instances and requires no additional imports.

Code Reference

Source Location

• Repository: Daft
• File: daft/dataframe/dataframe.py
• Lines: L4284-4356

Signature

def show(
    self,
    n: int = 8,
    format: PreviewFormat | None = None,
    verbose: bool = False,
    max_width: int = 30,
    align: PreviewAlign = "left",
    columns: list[PreviewColumn] | None = None,
) -> None

Import

import daft

# Method on DataFrame - no separate import needed
df.show()
df.show(n=20)
df.show(format="markdown")

I/O Contract

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
n	int	No	Number of rows to show. Defaults to 8.
format	PreviewFormat or None	No	Box-drawing format (e.g., "fancy", "markdown"). Defaults to None (fancy table).
verbose	bool	No	Whether to print additional header information. Defaults to False.
max_width	int	No	Maximum character width per column. Defaults to 30.
align	PreviewAlign	No	Column alignment ("left", "right", "center"). Defaults to "left".
columns	list[PreviewColumn] or None	No	Per-column formatting overrides. Must match schema length if provided.

Outputs

Name	Type	Description
return	None	Prints formatted table to stdout (or IPython display). Returns None.

Usage Examples

Basic Usage

import daft

df = daft.from_pydict({"x": [1, 2, 3], "y": ["a", "b", "c"]})

# Show first 8 rows (default)
df.show()

# Show first 2 rows
df.show(n=2)

Markdown Format

import daft

df = daft.from_pydict({"name": ["Alice", "Bob"], "score": [95, 87]})

# Output in markdown table format
df.show(format="markdown")

Custom Column Width

import daft

df = daft.from_pydict({"long_text": ["This is a very long string that might be truncated"]})

# Increase max column width to show more content
df.show(max_width=50)

Related Pages

Implements Principle

• Principle:Eventual_Inc_Daft_Data_Display

Requires Environment

• Environment:Eventual_Inc_Daft_Python_PyArrow_Core