How can I concatenate two string columns in Pandas, but excluding repeated words from the second one?

Question

Here's the thing, I have something like:

col1                          col2
This is a blue book           blue book above
This is a green ball          this is a ball
What is your name             blue book above

I want to create col3 like this:

col1                          col2                  col3
this is a blue book           blue book above       this is a blue book above
this is a green ball          this is a ball        this is a green ball
what is your name             blue book above       what is your name blue book above

I can't find a way to make this work

Does it matter what order the words are in, or is the condition just that if a word is in both col1 and col2 it should only be included in col3 once? — Chris Doyle
– Chris Doyle, Commented Aug 19, 2020 at 21:41
Please repeat on topic and how to ask from the intro tour. “Show me how to implement this feature” is not a Stack Overflow issue. You have to make an honest attempt, and then ask a specific question about your algorithm or technique. — Prune
– Prune, Commented Aug 19, 2020 at 21:42
This consists of several steps: concatenate two strings, break into words, de-dup the word lists, rejoin into a string, and create a new column with that value. Where are you stuck? What parts do you have working? Post your code! — Prune
– Prune, Commented Aug 19, 2020 at 21:44
@ChrisDoyle not so much, I would rather have in the order I mentioned, but that wouldn't break anything — Dumb ML
– Dumb ML, Commented Aug 19, 2020 at 21:45

Ricardo Rendich · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-19 22:06:05Z

2

concatenate two string columns in Pandas, but excluding repeated words from the second one

Try this:

def f(r):
  c1,c2 = r
  s1 = c1.split(" ")
  s2 = c2.split(" ")
  s3 = [s for s in s2 if s not in s1]
  return c1+" "+" ".join(s3)
df["col3"] = df[["col1", "col2"]].apply(f, axis=1)
df
                   col1               col2                               col3
0   this is a blue book    blue book above          this is a blue book above
1   this is a green ball    this is a ball               this is a green ball
2   what is your name      blue book above  what is your name blue book above

answered Aug 19, 2020 at 22:06

Ricardo Rendich

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