AI engineering glossary · NumPy pandas visualization
What is copy-on-write?
Copy-on-write (also called CoW): A pandas behaviour in which derived objects appear to be independent copies, but data is actually copied only at the moment one of them is modified. It removes the confusion between views and copies and the related chained-assignment problems, while avoiding needless copying.
Copy-on-write: an example
Under it, modifying a slice taken from a DataFrame never changes the original table.
Related terms
More NumPy pandas visualization terms
Where you learn it
Copy-on-write is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.