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docs/cudf/source/user_guide/pandas-comparison.md

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+# Comparison of cuDF and Pandas
+
+cuDF is a DataFrame library that closely matches the Pandas API, but
+leverages NVIDIA GPUs for performing computations for speed.  However,
+there are some differences between cuDF and Pandas, both in terms API
+and behavior. This page documents the similarities and differences
+between cuDF and Pandas.
+
+## Supported operations
+
+cuDF supports many of the same data structures and operations as
+Pandas.  This includes `Series`, `DataFrame`, `Index` and
+operations on them such as unary and binary operations, indexing,
+filtering, concatenating, joining, groupby and window operations -
+among many others.
+
+The best way to see if we support a particular Pandas API is to search
+our [API docs](/api_docs/index).
+
+## Data types
+
+cuDF supports many common data types supported by Pandas, including
+numeric, datetime, timestamp, string, and categorical data types.  In
+addition, we support special data types for decimal, list and "struct"
+values.  See the section on [Data Types](data-types) for
+details.
+
+Note that we do not support custom data types like Pandas'
+`ExtensionDtype`.
+
+## Null (or "missing") values
+
+Unlike Pandas, *all* data types in cuDF are nullable,
+meaning they can contain missing values (represented by `cudf.NA`).
+
+```{code} python
+>>> s = cudf.Series([1, 2, cudf.NA])
+>>> s
+>>> s
+0       1
+1       2
+2    <NA>
+dtype: int64
+```
+
+Nulls are not coerced to `nan` in any situation;
+compare the behaviour of cuDF with Pandas below:
+
+```{code} python
+>>> s = cudf.Series([1, 2, cudf.NA], dtype="category")
+>>> s
+0       1
+1       2
+2    <NA>
+dtype: category
+Categories (2, int64): [1, 2]
+
+>>> s = pd.Series([1, 2, pd.NA], dtype="category")
+>>> s
+0      1
+1      2
+2    NaN
+dtype: category
+Categories (2, int64): [1, 2]
+```
+
+See the docs on [missing data](Working-with-missing-data) for
+details.
+
+## Iteration
+
+Iterating over a cuDF `Series`, `DataFrame` or `Index` is not
+supported. This is because iterating over data that resides on the GPU
+will yield *extremely* poor performance, as GPUs are optimized for
+highly parallel operations rather than sequential operations.
+
+In the vast majority of cases, it is possible to avoid iteration and
+use an existing function or method to accomplish the same task. If you
+absolutely must iterate, copy the data from GPU to CPU by using
+`.to_arrow()` or `.to_pandas()`, then copy the result back to GPU
+using `.from_arrow()` or `.from_pandas()`.
+
+## Result ordering
+
+By default, `join` (or `merge`) and `groupby` operations in cuDF
+do *not* guarantee output ordering by default.
+Compare the results obtained from Pandas and cuDF below:
+
+```{code} python
+ >>> import cupy as cp
+ >>> df = cudf.DataFrame({'a': cp.random.randint(0, 1000, 1000), 'b': range(1000)})
+ >>> df.groupby("a").mean().head()
+          b
+ a
+ 742  694.5
+ 29   840.0
+ 459  525.5
+ 442  363.0
+ 666    7.0
+ >>> df.to_pandas().groupby("a").mean().head()
+          b
+ a
+ 2   643.75
+ 6    48.00
+ 7   631.00
+ 9   906.00
+ 10  640.00
+```
+
+To match Pandas behavior, you must explicitly pass `sort=True`:
+
+```{code} python
+>>> df.to_pandas().groupby("a", sort=True).mean().head()
+         b
+a
+2   643.75
+6    48.00
+7   631.00
+9   906.00
+10  640.00
+```
+
+## Column names
+
+Unlike Pandas, cuDF does not support duplicate column names.
+It is best to use strings for column names.
+
+## No true `"object"` data type
+
+In Pandas and NumPy, the `"object"` data type is used for
+collections of arbitrary Python objects.  For example, in Pandas you
+can do the following:
+
+```{code} python
+>>> import pandas as pd
+>>> s = pd.Series(["a", 1, [1, 2, 3]])
+0            a
+1            1
+2    [1, 2, 3]
+dtype: object
+```
+
+For compatibilty with Pandas, cuDF reports the data type for strings
+as `"object"`, but we do *not* support storing or operating on
+collections of arbitrary Python objects.
+
+## `.apply()` function limitations
+
+The `.apply()` function in Pandas accecpts a user-defined function
+(UDF) that can include arbitrary operations that are applied to each
+value of a `Series`, `DataFrame`, or in the case of a groupby,
+each group.  cuDF also supports `apply()`, but it relies on Numba to
+JIT compile the UDF and execute it on the GPU. This can be extremely
+fast, but imposes a few limitations on what operations are allowed in
+the UDF. See the docs on [UDFs](guide-to-udfs) for details.