Set DataFrame.Index.values

Question

I was answering a question on StackOverflow, when I encountered the following problem with pandas 1.0.1

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
df=  pd.DataFrame(np.random.random(10), range(10), columns=['foo'])

---

print(df)
print('\nInitial Index\n')
print(df.index)

print('\nSet DataFrame.index.values\n')
df.index.values[1::2] = 0
print(df.index.values)
print('\nBut df.index does not change\n')
print(df.index)
print(df)
print('\nSetting Index : df.index = df.index.values \n')

df.index = df.index.values
print('\nIndex changed\n')
print(df)

---

        foo
0  0.213399
1  0.369334
2  0.924745
3  0.778120
4  0.594977
5  0.916565
6  0.603158
7  0.703187
8  0.462739
9  0.728851

Initial Index

RangeIndex(start=0, stop=10, step=1)

Set DataFrame.index.values

[0 0 2 0 4 0 6 0 8 0]

But df.index does not change

RangeIndex(start=0, stop=10, step=1)
        foo
0  0.213399
1  0.369334
2  0.924745
3  0.778120
4  0.594977
5  0.916565
6  0.603158
7  0.703187
8  0.462739
9  0.728851

Setting Index : df.index = df.index.values


Index changed

        foo
0  0.213399
0  0.369334
2  0.924745
0  0.778120
4  0.594977
0  0.916565
6  0.603158
0  0.703187
8  0.462739
0  0.728851

it seems that we can change the values ​​attribute from outside the df.index object but this does not change the index. Is this really thought like this?

shouldn't the .setter be removed from the property if this doesn't really change the index?

https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/reference/api/pandas.Index.values.html

Answer 1

For index replace we have the rename function for it, also it dose not support assignment from its values

df.rename(index=dict.fromkeys(df.index[1::2],0))
Out[162]: 
        foo
0  0.166692
0  0.889263
2  0.509025
0  0.688095
4  0.995862
0  0.258366
6  0.080054
0  0.406233
8  0.296096
0  0.680760

The problem here is for RangeIndex

    if isinstance(data, RangeIndex):
        return RangeIndex(start=data, copy=copy, dtype=dtype, name=name)

If we change the range index to other type like below, it will work

df.index=[100,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
df.index.values[1::2] = 0 
df
Out[177]: 
          foo
100  0.166692
0    0.889263
1    0.509025
0    0.688095
3    0.995862
0    0.258366
5    0.080054
0    0.406233
7    0.296096
0    0.680760