title: ExcelFile Vs. read_excel in pandas
body: <p>I'm diving into pandas and experimenting around. As for reading data from an Excel file. I wonder what's the difference between using ExcelFile to read_excel. Both seem to work (albeit slightly different syntax, as could be expected), and the documentation supports both. In both cases, the documentation describes the method the same: "Read an Excel table into DataFrame" and "Read an Excel table into a pandas DataFrame". (<a href="http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/generated/pandas.io.excel.read_excel.html" rel="noreferrer">documentation for read_excel</a>, and <a href="http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/generated/pandas.ExcelFile.parse.html?highlight=excelfile#pandas.ExcelFile" rel="noreferrer">for excel_file</a>)</p>
  
  <p>I'm seeing answers here on SO that uses either, w/o addressing the difference. Also, a Google search didn't produce a result that discusses this issue.</p>
  
  <p>WRT my testing, these seem equivalent:</p>
  
  <pre><code>path = "test/dummydata.xlsx"
  xl = pd.ExcelFile(path)
  df = xl.parse("dummydata")  # sheet name
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and</p>
  
  <pre><code>path = "test/dummydata.xlsx" 
  df = pd.io.excel.read_excel(path, sheetname=0)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>other than the fact that the latter saves me a line, is there a difference between the two, and is there a reason to use either one?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>