Here is a solution through list comprehension. cols is the list of columns to get index for:

[df.columns.get_loc(c) for c in cols if c in df]

DSM's solution works, but if you wanted a direct equivalent to which you could do (df.columns == name).nonzero()

When you might be looking to find multiple column matches, a vectorized solution using searchsorted method could be used. Thus, with df as the dataframe and query_cols as the column names to be searched for, an implementation would be -

def column_index(df, query_cols):
    cols = df.columns.values
    sidx = np.argsort(cols)
    return sidx[np.searchsorted(cols,query_cols,sorter=sidx)]

Sample run -

In [162]: df
Out[162]: 
   apple  banana  pear  orange  peach
0      8       3     4       4      2
1      4       4     3       0      1
2      1       2     6       8      1

In [163]: column_index(df, ['peach', 'banana', 'apple'])
Out[163]: array([4, 1, 0])

In case you want the column name from the column location (the other way around to the OP question), you can use:

>>> df.columns.get_values()[location]

Using @DSM Example:

>>> df = DataFrame({"pear": [1,2,3], "apple": [2,3,4], "orange": [3,4,5]})

>>> df.columns

Index(['apple', 'orange', 'pear'], dtype='object')

>>> df.columns.get_values()[1]

'orange'

Other ways:

df.iloc[:,1].name

df.columns[location] #(thanks to @roobie-nuby for pointing that out in comments.) 

For returning multiple column indices, I recommend using the pandas.Index method get_indexer, if you have unique labels:

df = pd.DataFrame({"pear": [1, 2, 3], "apple": [2, 3, 4], "orange": [3, 4, 5]})
df.columns.get_indexer(['pear', 'apple'])
# Out: array([0, 1], dtype=int64)

If you have non-unique labels in the index (columns only support unique labels) get_indexer_for. It takes the same args as get_indeder:

df = pd.DataFrame(
    {"pear": [1, 2, 3], "apple": [2, 3, 4], "orange": [3, 4, 5]}, 
    index=[0, 1, 1])
df.index.get_indexer_for([0, 1])
# Out: array([0, 1, 2], dtype=int64)

Both methods also support non-exact indexing with, f.i. for float values taking the nearest value with a tolerance. If two indices have the same distance to the specified label or are duplicates, the index with the larger index value is selected:

df = pd.DataFrame(
    {"pear": [1, 2, 3], "apple": [2, 3, 4], "orange": [3, 4, 5]},
    index=[0, .9, 1.1])
df.index.get_indexer([0, 1])
# array([ 0, -1], dtype=int64)

To modify DSM's answer a bit, get_loc has some weird properties depending on the type of index in the current version of Pandas (1.1.5) so depending on your Index type you might get back an index, a mask, or a slice. This is somewhat frustrating for me because I don't want to modify the entire columns just to extract one variable's index. Much simpler is to avoid the function altogether:

list(df.columns).index('pear')

Very straightforward and probably fairly quick.

how about this:

df = DataFrame({"pear": [1,2,3], "apple": [2,3,4], "orange": [3,4,5]})
out = np.argwhere(df.columns.isin(['apple', 'orange'])).ravel()
print(out)
[1 2]

When the column might or might not exist, then the following (variant from above works.

ix = 'none'
try:
     ix = list(df.columns).index('Col_X')
except ValueError as e:
     ix = None  
     pass

if ix is None:
   # do something

import random
def char_range(c1, c2):                      # question 7001144
    for c in range(ord(c1), ord(c2)+1):
        yield chr(c)      
df = pd.DataFrame()
for c in char_range('a', 'z'):               
    df[f'{c}'] = random.sample(range(10), 3) # Random Data
rearranged = random.sample(range(26), 26)    # Random Order
df = df.iloc[:, rearranged]
print(df.iloc[:,:15])                        # 15 Col View         

for col in df.columns:             # List of indices and columns
    print(str(df.columns.get_loc(col)) + '\t' + col)

![Results](Results