# pandas.describe_option

`pandas.``describe_option`(pat, _print_desc=False) = <pandas.core.config.CallableDynamicDoc object>

  Prints the description for one or more registered options.

  Call with not arguments to get a listing for all registered options.

  Available options:

  - compute.[use_bottleneck, use_numexpr]
  - display.[chop_threshold, colheader_justify, column_space, date_dayfirst, date_yearfirst, encoding, expand_frame_repr, float_format, height]
  - display.html.[border, table_schema]
  - display.[large_repr]
  - display.latex.[escape, longtable, multicolumn, multicolumn_format, multirow, repr]
  - display.[line_width, max_categories, max_columns, max_colwidth, max_info_columns, max_info_rows, max_rows, max_seq_items, memory_usage, multi_sparse, notebook_repr_html, pprint_nest_depth, precision, show_dimensions]
  - display.unicode.[ambiguous_as_wide, east_asian_width]
  - display.[width]
  - html.[border]
  - io.excel.xls.[writer]
  - io.excel.xlsm.[writer]
  - io.excel.xlsx.[writer]
  - io.hdf.[default_format, dropna_table]
  - io.parquet.[engine]
  - mode.[chained_assignment, sim_interactive, use_inf_as_na, use_inf_as_null]
  - plotting.matplotlib.[register_converters]

  Parameters:

  pat : str

  > Regexp pattern. All matching keys will have their description displayed.

  _print_desc : bool, default True

  > If True (default) the description(s) will be printed to stdout. Otherwise, the description(s) will be returned as a unicode string (for testing).

  Returns: | None by default, the description(s) as a unicode string if _print_desc is False

  Notes

  The available options with its descriptions:

  compute.use_bottleneck : bool
    Use the bottleneck library to accelerate if it is installed, the default is True Valid values: False,True [default: True] [currently: True]
  compute.use_numexpr : bool
    Use the numexpr library to accelerate computation if it is installed, the default is True Valid values: False,True [default: True] [currently: True]
  display.chop_threshold : float or None
    if set to a float value, all float values smaller then the given threshold will be displayed as exactly 0 by repr and friends. [default: None] [currently: None]
  display.colheader_justify : ‘left’/’right’
    Controls the justification of column headers. used by DataFrameFormatter. [default: right] [currently: right]
  display.column_space No description available.
    [default: 12] [currently: 12]
  display.date_dayfirst : boolean
    When True, prints and parses dates with the day first, eg 20/01/2005 [default: False] [currently: False]
  display.date_yearfirst : boolean
    When True, prints and parses dates with the year first, eg 2005/01/20 [default: False] [currently: False]
  display.encoding : str/unicode
    Defaults to the detected encoding of the console. Specifies the encoding to be used for strings returned by to_string, these are generally strings meant to be displayed on the console. [default: ANSI_X3.4-1968] [currently: ANSI_X3.4-1968]
  display.expand_frame_repr : boolean
    Whether to print out the full DataFrame repr for wide DataFrames across multiple lines, max_columns is still respected, but the output will wrap-around across multiple “pages” if its width exceeds display.width. [default: True] [currently: True]
  display.float_format : callable
    The callable should accept a floating point number and return a string with the desired format of the number. This is used in some places like SeriesFormatter. See formats.format.EngFormatter for an example. [default: None] [currently: None]
  display.height : int
    Deprecated. [default: 60] [currently: 60]
  display.html.border : int
    A `border=value` attribute is inserted in the `<table>` tag for the DataFrame HTML repr. [default: 1] [currently: 1]
  display.html.table_schema : boolean
    Whether to publish a Table Schema representation for frontends that support it. (default: False) [default: False] [currently: False]
  display.large_repr : ‘truncate’/’info’
    For DataFrames exceeding max_rows/max_cols, the repr (and HTML repr) can show a truncated table (the default from 0.13), or switch to the view from df.info() (the behaviour in earlier versions of pandas). [default: truncate] [currently: truncate]
  display.latex.escape : bool
    This specifies if the to_latex method of a Dataframe uses escapes special characters. Valid values: False,True [default: True] [currently: True]
  display.latex.longtable :bool
    This specifies if the to_latex method of a Dataframe uses the longtable format. Valid values: False,True [default: False] [currently: False]
  display.latex.multicolumn : bool
    This specifies if the to_latex method of a Dataframe uses multicolumns to pretty-print MultiIndex columns. Valid values: False,True [default: True] [currently: True]
  display.latex.multicolumn_format : bool
    This specifies if the to_latex method of a Dataframe uses multicolumns to pretty-print MultiIndex columns. Valid values: False,True [default: l] [currently: l]
  display.latex.multirow : bool
    This specifies if the to_latex method of a Dataframe uses multirows to pretty-print MultiIndex rows. Valid values: False,True [default: False] [currently: False]
  display.latex.repr : boolean
    Whether to produce a latex DataFrame representation for jupyter environments that support it. (default: False) [default: False] [currently: False]
  display.line_width : int
    Deprecated. [default: 80] [currently: 80]
  display.max_categories : int
    This sets the maximum number of categories pandas should output when printing out a Categorical or a Series of dtype “category”. [default: 8] [currently: 8]
  display.max_columns : int

    If max_cols is exceeded, switch to truncate view. Depending on large_repr, objects are either centrally truncated or printed as a summary view. ‘None’ value means unlimited.

    In case python/IPython is running in a terminal and large_repr equals ‘truncate’ this can be set to 0 and pandas will auto-detect the width of the terminal and print a truncated object which fits the screen width. The IPython notebook, IPython qtconsole, or IDLE do not run in a terminal and hence it is not possible to do correct auto-detection. [default: 20] [currently: 20]

  display.max_colwidth : int
    The maximum width in characters of a column in the repr of a pandas data structure. When the column overflows, a “…” placeholder is embedded in the output. [default: 50] [currently: 50]
  display.max_info_columns : int
    max_info_columns is used in DataFrame.info method to decide if per column information will be printed. [default: 100] [currently: 100]
  display.max_info_rows : int or None
    df.info() will usually show null-counts for each column. For large frames this can be quite slow. max_info_rows and max_info_cols limit this null check only to frames with smaller dimensions than specified. [default: 1690785] [currently: 1690785]
  display.max_rows : int

    If max_rows is exceeded, switch to truncate view. Depending on large_repr, objects are either centrally truncated or printed as a summary view. ‘None’ value means unlimited.

    In case python/IPython is running in a terminal and large_repr equals ‘truncate’ this can be set to 0 and pandas will auto-detect the height of the terminal and print a truncated object which fits the screen height. The IPython notebook, IPython qtconsole, or IDLE do not run in a terminal and hence it is not possible to do correct auto-detection. [default: 60] [currently: 15]

  display.max_seq_items : int or None

    when pretty-printing a long sequence, no more then max_seq_items will be printed. If items are omitted, they will be denoted by the addition of “…” to the resulting string.

    If set to None, the number of items to be printed is unlimited. [default: 100] [currently: 100]

  display.memory_usage : bool, string or None
    This specifies if the memory usage of a DataFrame should be displayed when df.info() is called. Valid values True,False,’deep’ [default: True] [currently: True]
  display.multi_sparse : boolean
    “sparsify” MultiIndex display (don’t display repeated elements in outer levels within groups) [default: True] [currently: True]
  display.notebook_repr_html : boolean
    When True, IPython notebook will use html representation for pandas objects (if it is available). [default: True] [currently: True]
  display.pprint_nest_depth : int
    Controls the number of nested levels to process when pretty-printing [default: 3] [currently: 3]
  display.precision : int
    Floating point output precision (number of significant digits). This is only a suggestion [default: 6] [currently: 6]
  display.show_dimensions : boolean or ‘truncate’
    Whether to print out dimensions at the end of DataFrame repr. If ‘truncate’ is specified, only print out the dimensions if the frame is truncated (e.g. not display all rows and/or columns) [default: truncate] [currently: truncate]
  display.unicode.ambiguous_as_wide : boolean
    Whether to use the Unicode East Asian Width to calculate the display text width. Enabling this may affect to the performance (default: False) [default: False] [currently: False]
  display.unicode.east_asian_width : boolean
    Whether to use the Unicode East Asian Width to calculate the display text width. Enabling this may affect to the performance (default: False) [default: False] [currently: False]
  display.width : int
    Width of the display in characters. In case python/IPython is running in a terminal this can be set to None and pandas will correctly auto-detect the width. Note that the IPython notebook, IPython qtconsole, or IDLE do not run in a terminal and hence it is not possible to correctly detect the width. [default: 80] [currently: 80]
  html.border : int
    A `border=value` attribute is inserted in the `<table>` tag for the DataFrame HTML repr. [default: 1] [currently: 1] (Deprecated, use display.html.border instead.)
  io.excel.xls.writer : string
    The default Excel writer engine for ‘xls’ files. Available options: auto, xlwt. [default: auto] [currently: auto]
  io.excel.xlsm.writer : string
    The default Excel writer engine for ‘xlsm’ files. Available options: auto, openpyxl. [default: auto] [currently: auto]
  io.excel.xlsx.writer : string
    The default Excel writer engine for ‘xlsx’ files. Available options: auto, openpyxl, xlsxwriter. [default: auto] [currently: auto]
  io.hdf.default_format : format
    default format writing format, if None, then put will default to ‘fixed’ and append will default to ‘table’ [default: None] [currently: None]
  io.hdf.dropna_table : boolean
    drop ALL nan rows when appending to a table [default: False] [currently: False]
  io.parquet.engine : string
    The default parquet reader/writer engine. Available options: ‘auto’, ‘pyarrow’, ‘fastparquet’, the default is ‘auto’ [default: auto] [currently: auto]
  mode.chained_assignment : string
    Raise an exception, warn, or no action if trying to use chained assignment, The default is warn [default: warn] [currently: warn]
  mode.sim_interactive : boolean
    Whether to simulate interactive mode for purposes of testing [default: False] [currently: False]
  mode.use_inf_as_na : boolean
    True means treat None, NaN, INF, -INF as NA (old way), False means None and NaN are null, but INF, -INF are not NA (new way). [default: False] [currently: False]

  mode.use_inf_as_null use_inf_as_null had been deprecated and will be removed in a future version. Use use_inf_as_na instead.

  > [default: False] [currently: False] (Deprecated, use mode.use_inf_as_na instead.)

  plotting.matplotlib.register_converters : bool
    Whether to register converters with matplotlib’s units registry for dates, times, datetimes, and Periods. Toggling to False will remove the converters, restoring any converters that pandas overwrote. [default: True] [currently: True]

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