Find and Replace loop in pandas for Sub string

Question

I have a dataframe and alot of the values in one of the columns have python-unfriendly characters, like &.

I wanted to make a dictionary and then loop through with find and replacements

sort of like this:

replacements = {
    " ": ""
    ,"&": "and"
    ,"/":""
    ,"+":"plus"
    ,"(":""
    ,")":""
    }

df['VariableName']=df['VariableName'].replace(replacements,regex=True)

however this brings up the following error code:

error: nothing to repeat at position 0

jezrael · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-03 09:33:02Z

2

I think you need escape special regex characters in dictionary comprehension:

import re

df = pd.DataFrame({'VariableName':['ss dd +','(aa)']})

replacements = {re.escape(k):v for k, v in replacements.items()}
df['VariableName']=df['VariableName'].replace(replacements,regex=True)

print (df)
  VariableName
0     ssddplus
1           aa

edited Dec 3, 2018 at 9:33

answered Dec 3, 2018 at 9:29

jezrael

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1 Comment

fred.schwartz Over a year ago

Thanks - that worked perfectly. I'll accept answer once the timer lets me. Thanks alot

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