CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpandas
csg2136
csg2136

Reputation: 245

Select rows matching a value in a string within a column

In python's pandas, suppose there is a DataFrame in which the values in one of the columns is a string. 

df = pd.DataFrame({'State':['California','Oregon','Washington'],\
     'Cities':['Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego','Portland, Eugene','Seattle, Spokane']})

How would you select rows matching one value in any of the string within a column? For example, how would return just the rows that have 'Los Angeles' as one of the cities?

My first thought is to loop through each row in the DataFrame, and then use string manipulation ( .split(',') ) to break up each string (this also does not seem efficient with very large datasets). However, I'm not sure where to go from there to actually select that row.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 5623

Answers (1)

vk1011
vk1011

Reputation: 7179

Following from Woody Pride's comment:

To get one city:

df[df.Cities == 'Los Angeles']

>>>
Empty DataFrame
Columns: [Cities, State]
Index: []

For string containing potentially multiple cities:

df[df.Cities.str.contains('Los Angeles')]

>>>                            
                            Cities       State
0  Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego  California

See docs.

Upvotes: 3

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