Comparing two dataframes and getting the differences

This approach, df1 != df2, works only for dataframes with identical rows and columns. In fact, all dataframes axes are compared with _indexed_same method, and exception is raised if differences found, even in columns/indices order.

If I got you right, you want not to find changes, but symmetric difference. For that, one approach might be concatenate dataframes:

>>> df = pd.concat([df1, df2])
>>> df = df.reset_index(drop=True)

group by

>>> df_gpby = df.groupby(list(df.columns))

get index of unique records

>>> idx = [x[0] for x in df_gpby.groups.values() if len(x) == 1]

filter

>>> df.reindex(idx)
         Date   Fruit   Num   Color
9  2013-11-25  Orange   8.6  Orange
8  2013-11-25   Apple  22.1     Red

Updating and placing, somewhere it will be easier for others to find, ling's comment upon jur's response above.

df_diff = pd.concat([df1,df2]).drop_duplicates(keep=False)

---

Testing with these DataFrames:

# with import pandas as pd

df1 = pd.DataFrame({
    'Date':['2013-11-24','2013-11-24','2013-11-24','2013-11-24'],
    'Fruit':['Banana','Orange','Apple','Celery'],
    'Num':[22.1,8.6,7.6,10.2],
    'Color':['Yellow','Orange','Green','Green'],
    })

df2 = pd.DataFrame({
    'Date':['2013-11-24','2013-11-24','2013-11-24','2013-11-24','2013-11-25','2013-11-25'],
    'Fruit':['Banana','Orange','Apple','Celery','Apple','Orange'],
    'Num':[22.1,8.6,7.6,10.2,22.1,8.6],
    'Color':['Yellow','Orange','Green','Green','Red','Orange'],
    })

---

Results in this:

# for df1

         Date   Fruit   Num   Color
0  2013-11-24  Banana  22.1  Yellow
1  2013-11-24  Orange   8.6  Orange
2  2013-11-24   Apple   7.6   Green
3  2013-11-24  Celery  10.2   Green


# for df2

         Date   Fruit   Num   Color
0  2013-11-24  Banana  22.1  Yellow
1  2013-11-24  Orange   8.6  Orange
2  2013-11-24   Apple   7.6   Green
3  2013-11-24  Celery  10.2   Green
4  2013-11-25   Apple  22.1     Red
5  2013-11-25  Orange   8.6  Orange


# for df_diff

         Date   Fruit   Num   Color
4  2013-11-25   Apple  22.1     Red
5  2013-11-25  Orange   8.6  Orange