in a pandas dataframe how can I apply a sort of excel left('state',2) to only take the first two letters. Ideally I want to learn how to use left,right and mid in a dataframe too. So need an equivalent and not a "trick" for this specific example.
data = {'state': ['Auckland', 'Otago', 'Wellington', 'Dunedin', 'Hamilton'],
'year': [2000, 2001, 2002, 2001, 2002],
'pop': [1.5, 1.7, 3.6, 2.4, 2.9]}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)
print df
pop state year
0 1.5 Auckland 2000
1 1.7 Otago 2001
2 3.6 Wellington 2002
3 2.4 Dunedin 2001
4 2.9 Hamilton 2002
I want to get this:
pop state year StateInitial
0 1.5 Auckland 2000 Au
1 1.7 Otago 2001 Ot
2 3.6 Wellington 2002 We
3 2.4 Dunedin 2001 Du
4 2.9 Hamilton 2002 Ha
First two letters for each value in a column:
>>> df['StateInitial'] = df['state'].str[:2]
>>> df
pop state year StateInitial
0 1.5 Auckland 2000 Au
1 1.7 Otago 2001 Ot
2 3.6 Wellington 2002 We
3 2.4 Dunedin 2001 Du
4 2.9 Hamilton 2002 Ha
For last two that would be df['state'].str[-2:]. Don't know what exactly you want for middle, but you can apply arbitrary function to a column with apply method:
>>> df['state'].apply(lambda x: x[len(x)/2-1:len(x)/2+1])
0 kl
1 ta
2 in
3 ne
4 il