Pandas extract substring from column of string using regex

Question

I have a dataframe with the string column as:

df['C23']

Col1 Col2
11   /*[lion]*/
21   /*[tiger]*/

I need the following:

Col1 Col2
11   lion
21   tiger

I tried the following code:

df['C23'].str.extract(r"/*(.*?)*/')

but it produces empty strings.

I am confused, is the column C23 or Col2? is 11 /*[lion]*/ the content of the column? — mozway
– mozway, Commented Sep 28, 2021 at 15:06

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-28 15:01:51Z

1

You can use

df['result'] = df['C23'].str.extract(r"/\*\[(.*?)]\*/")

The /\*\[(.*?)]\*/ regex matches

/\*\[ - /*[ string
(.*?) - Group 1: any zero or more chars other than line break chars as few as possible
]\*/ - ]*/ string

answered Sep 28, 2021 at 15:01

Wiktor Stribiżew

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Comments

mozway · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-28 15:07:41Z

0

Assuming you want to convert /*[lion]*/ to lion and all elements follow the same pattern, you do not need a regex, just slice:

df['Col2'] = df['Col2'].str[3:-3]

answered Sep 28, 2021 at 15:07

mozway

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