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DOC: warning section on memory overflow when joining/merging dataframes on index with duplicate keys #14788

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Dec 11, 2016
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4 changes: 4 additions & 0 deletions doc/source/merging.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -817,6 +817,10 @@ equivalent:
left.join(right, on=key_or_keys)
pd.merge(left, right, left_on=key_or_keys, right_index=True,
how='left', sort=False)

.. warning::

* Joining on index with duplicate keys when joining large dataframes would cause severe memory overflow, sometimes freezes the computer and user has to hard reboot, which can be dangerous for unsaved work. Please make sure no duplicate keys in index before joining.
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It's not needed to start with * (as this will give a one-bullet list). You only need an indentation so the text belongs to the warning.
Further, you have some wonky spaces in the text.

On the content: I don't think this is specific to joining on the index? But just on joining on a key with duplicate values?


Obviously you can choose whichever form you find more convenient. For
many-to-one joins (where one of the DataFrame's is already indexed by the join
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