Deleting a character from the entries of a dataframe in python

Question

So I have a dataframe where a row called 'Months' has entries in form: 1M , 12M etc. So I wanted to get rid of the M letter. I have tried using the .replace() function but had no success in doing so: df['Months'].replace('M','') what is wrong in my implementation and how can I correct it?

Thanks

You are really close, need `df['Months'].replace('M','', regex=True)` for replace substrings — jezrael, Feb 14 '18 at 15:40

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 14 '18 at 15:42

I think you're looking for ".str.replace", i.e.:

df['Months'] = df['Months'].str.replace('M','')

The ".str" functions apply a string function to each entry of the database; instead the ".replace" one replaces all objects, so in case you should be doing:

for i in range(1,13):
    df['Months'] = df['Months'].replace('{}M'.format(i),str(i))

which is of course clumsier and likely slower.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '18 at 15:40

2

Use df['Months'].str.replace('M', '').

The difference:

pd.Series.replace matches on the entire entry in a series.
pd.Series.str.replace matches substrings of entries in a series.

answered Feb 14 '18 at 15:40

jpp

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Deleting a character from the entries of a dataframe in python

2 Answers2