BUG: groupby, as_index=False still returning group variable as index

[nickeubank]

Code Sample, a copy-pastable example if possible

a = pd.DataFrame({'a':[1,1,2,2], 'b':[1,1,2,2], 'c':[1,1,1,1]})
a.groupby(['a','b'], as_index=False).apply(lambda x: 1)

Out[4]: 
a  b
1  1    1
2  2    1
dtype: int64

Expected Output

Out[4]:
0    1
1    1
dtype: int64

(this is what you get with a unique by column --

a.groupby(['a'], as_index=False).apply(lambda x: 1)
Out[8]: 
0    1
1    1
dtype: int64

output of pd.show_versions()

pd.show_versions()

INSTALLED VERSIONS

commit: None
python: 3.5.1.final.0
python-bits: 64
OS: Darwin
OS-release: 15.4.0
machine: x86_64
processor: i386
byteorder: little
LC_ALL: None
LANG: en_US.UTF-8

pandas: 0.18.1
nose: 1.3.7
pip: 8.1.1
setuptools: 20.3
Cython: 0.23.4
numpy: 1.11.0
scipy: 0.17.0
statsmodels: None
xarray: None
IPython: 4.1.2
sphinx: 1.3.5
patsy: 0.4.0
dateutil: 2.5.1
pytz: 2016.2
blosc: None
bottleneck: 1.0.0
tables: 3.2.2
numexpr: 2.5.1
matplotlib: 1.5.1
openpyxl: 2.3.2
xlrd: 0.9.4
xlwt: 1.0.0
xlsxwriter: 0.8.4
lxml: 3.6.0
bs4: 4.4.1
html5lib: None
httplib2: None
apiclient: None
sqlalchemy: 1.0.12
pymysql: None
psycopg2: None
jinja2: 2.8
boto: 2.39.0
pandas_datareader: None

[jreback]

I guess. this is very odd to do.

[jreback]

to be honest we should just remove as_index entirely. Its a simple .reset_index() if someone wants it.

[pfrcks]

@jreback I want to look into this.
Can you specify what do you mean by simple reset_index().
Do we apply reset_index attribute in case someone passes the 'as_index' param?

[jreback]

no that's a different (API issue)

this can be solved by stepping thru code and see where it doesn't properly handle the as_insex flag

[nickeubank]

Don't have a strong preference on how it behaves (or if we keep as_index), just want to get rid of inconsistent behavior.

[pfrcks]

@jreback Upon looking through the code, core/groupby.py seems to be responsible in some way.
Upon looking in the file I came across _index_with_as_index function which has not been called anywhere.
The func is supposed to 'Take boolean mask of index to be returned from apply, if as_index=True', but since it is note getting called from anywhere, I don't understand what its purpose.

[jreback]

@pfrcks write the test and step thru. identify where you think you need to change and test.

[jrbrodie77]

I ran into this same bug today in ver. 0.21

a = pd.DataFrame([np.zeros(3), np.ones(3), 2*np.ones(3)], columns="A B C".split())
a.groupby(['A', 'B'], as_index=False).apply(np.mean)

if my groupby is a pair of column names as_index is ignored.

If I get a chance in the next couple of weeks I may try to find/fix it.