how to replace an entire column on Pandas.DataFrame

If you don't mind getting a new data frame object returned as opposed to updating the original Pandas .assign() will avoid SettingWithCopyWarning. Your example:

df = df.assign(B=df1['E'])

If the indices match then:

df['B'] = df1['E']

should work otherwise:

df['B'] = df1['E'].values

will work so long as the length of the elements matches

Simply do:

df.B = df1.E

That's all!

For those that struggle with the "SettingWithCopy" warning, here's a workaround which may not be so efficient, but still gets the job done.

Suppose you with to overwrite column_1 and column_3, but retain column_2 and column_4

columns_to_overwrite = ["column_1", "column_3"]

First delete the columns that you intend to replace...

original_df.drop(labels=columns_to_overwrite, axis="columns", inplace=True)

... then re-insert the columns, but using the values that you intended to overwrite

original_df[columns_to_overwrite] = other_data_frame[columns_to_overwrite]