Added WhatsNew + Docstrings to_latex to_string

Author: mcocdawc

doc/source/whatsnew/v0.20.0.txt

@@ -230,6 +230,7 @@ Other enhancements
 - ``pd.TimedeltaIndex`` now has a custom datetick formatter specifically designed for nanosecond level precision (:issue:`8711`)
 - ``pd.types.concat.union_categoricals`` gained the ``ignore_ordered`` argument to allow ignoring the ordered attribute of unioned categoricals (:issue:`13410`). See the :ref:`categorical union docs <categorical.union>` for more information.
 - ``pandas.io.json.json_normalize()`` with an empty ``list`` will return an empty ``DataFrame`` (:issue:`15534`)
+- ``pd.DataFrame.to_latex`` and ``pd.DataFrame.to_string`` now allow optional header aliases. (:issue:`15536`)
 
 .. _ISO 8601 duration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Durations
 

pandas/core/frame.py

@@ -1529,6 +1529,8 @@ def to_feather(self, fname):
         from pandas.io.feather_format import to_feather
         to_feather(self, fname)
 
+    @Substitution('Write out column names. If a list of string is given, \
+it is assumed to be aliases for the column names')
     @Appender(fmt.docstring_to_string, indents=1)
     def to_string(self, buf=None, columns=None, col_space=None, header=True,
                   index=True, na_rep='NaN', formatters=None, float_format=None,
@@ -1556,6 +1558,7 @@ def to_string(self, buf=None, columns=None, col_space=None, header=True,
             result = formatter.buf.getvalue()
             return result
 
+    @Substitution('whether to print column labels, default True')
     @Appender(fmt.docstring_to_string, indents=1)
     def to_html(self, buf=None, columns=None, col_space=None, header=True,
                 index=True, na_rep='NaN', formatters=None, float_format=None,
@@ -1609,6 +1612,8 @@ def to_html(self, buf=None, columns=None, col_space=None, header=True,
         if buf is None:
             return formatter.buf.getvalue()
 
+    @Substitution('Write out column names. If a list of string is given, \
+it is assumed to be aliases for the column names.')
     @Appender(fmt.common_docstring + fmt.return_docstring, indents=1)
     def to_latex(self, buf=None, columns=None, col_space=None, header=True,
                  index=True, na_rep='NaN', formatters=None, float_format=None,

pandas/formats/format.py

@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@
     col_space : int, optional
         the minimum width of each column
     header : bool, optional
-        whether to print column labels, default True
+        %s
     index : bool, optional
         whether to print index (row) labels, default True
     na_rep : string, optional