How to select all columns, except one column in pandas?

When the columns are not a MultiIndex, df.columns is just an array of column names so you can do:

df.loc[:, df.columns != 'b']

          a         c         d
0  0.561196  0.013768  0.772827
1  0.882641  0.615396  0.075381
2  0.368824  0.651378  0.397203
3  0.788730  0.568099  0.869127

Don't use ix. It's deprecated. The most readable and idiomatic way of doing this is df.drop():

>>> df

          a         b         c         d
0  0.175127  0.191051  0.382122  0.869242
1  0.414376  0.300502  0.554819  0.497524
2  0.142878  0.406830  0.314240  0.093132
3  0.337368  0.851783  0.933441  0.949598

>>> df.drop('b', axis=1)

          a         c         d
0  0.175127  0.382122  0.869242
1  0.414376  0.554819  0.497524
2  0.142878  0.314240  0.093132
3  0.337368  0.933441  0.949598

Note that by default, .drop() does not operate inplace; despite the ominous name, df is unharmed by this process. If you want to permanently remove b from df, do df.drop('b', inplace=True).

df.drop() also accepts a list of labels, e.g. df.drop(['a', 'b'], axis=1) will drop column a and b.

df[df.columns.difference(['b'])]

Out: 
          a         c         d
0  0.427809  0.459807  0.333869
1  0.678031  0.668346  0.645951
2  0.996573  0.673730  0.314911
3  0.786942  0.719665  0.330833