python data frames - splitting string column into two columns

Question

I'm playing with Whatsapp's history chat. I want to split the message column into two columns - time and message.

In order to split the two with the delimiter " - " I tried:

history['message'] = pd.DataFrame([line.split(" - ",1) for line in history['message']])

But history['message'] becomes the time only.

I don't understand why, because the line.split(" - ", 1) supposes to give a list of 2 elements at most.

jezrael · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-21 14:59:28Z

4

I think you need str.split with expand=True for return DataFrame:

history = pd.DataFrame({'message':['a - b','c - d - r']})

history[['a','b']] = history['message'].str.split(' - ', n=1, expand=True)
print (history)
     message  a      b
0      a - b  a      b
1  c - d - r  c  d - r

If no NaNs use:

history[['a','b']] = pd.DataFrame([line.split(" - ", 1) for line in history['message']])

For me return error:

history['a'] = pd.DataFrame([line.split(" - ", 1) for line in history['message']])
print (history)

ValueError: Wrong number of items passed 2, placement implies 1

So if for you it working, try check separator, because it seems there is no split:

Sample:

history['a'] = history['message'].str.split('^', n=1, expand=True)
print (history)
     message          a
0      a - b      a - b
1  c - d - r  c - d - r

edited Sep 21, 2017 at 14:59

answered Sep 21, 2017 at 14:53

jezrael

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