About
Narwhals provides a lightweight, zero-dependency compatibility layer for Python dataframe libraries, allowing developers to write backend-independent code using a unified Polars-like API. It is particularly useful for library maintainers and data engineers who need to support multiple data processing engines without maintaining separate codebases, ensuring performance and type safety across both eager and lazy execution modes. By using Narwhals, you can resolve subtle differences between libraries while maintaining negligible performance overhead.
