pandas.Index.symmetric_difference

Index.symmetric_difference(other, result_name=None)

Compute the sorted symmetric difference of two Index objects.

Parameters:	other : Index or array-like result_name : str
Returns:	symmetric_difference : Index

Notes

symmetric_difference contains elements that appear in either idx1 or idx2 but not both. Equivalent to the Index created by (idx1 - idx2) + (idx2 - idx1) with duplicates dropped.

The sorting of a result containing NaN values is not guaranteed across Python versions. See GitHub issue #6444.

Examples

>>> idx1 = Index([1, 2, 3, 4])
>>> idx2 = Index([2, 3, 4, 5])
>>> idx1.symmetric_difference(idx2)
Int64Index([1, 5], dtype='int64')

You can also use the ^ operator:

>>> idx1 ^ idx2
Int64Index([1, 5], dtype='int64')