How do I select pandas row if a column in that row contains a substring present in a list

Question

So if my pandas df has two columns, Countries and places:

  Countries     Places
0        US   New York
1        UK   Old York
2    France      Paris
3     India  New Delhi

I have a list like so: l = ['New','Old']

How would I select rows for which the places column contain text that contain string that is also present in my list. (The whole string may or may not be present in the list) (It should create a data frame that only contains, US, UK, India but NOT france). (It will

Corralien · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-05 23:12:16Z

5

Use str.contains

l = ['New', 'Old']
out = df[df['Places'].str.contains('|'.join(l))]
print(out)

# Output
  Countries     Places
0        US   New York
1        UK   Old York
3     India  New Delhi

Note: str.contains search in whole string. If you want to limit the search to the start of string, use str.match instead.

edited Feb 5, 2022 at 23:12

answered Feb 5, 2022 at 22:01

Corralien

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5 Comments

vaeVictis Over a year ago

I was giving my two cents with a regex, but I saw your answer. Wouldn't it be better to use startswith instead of contains?

Corralien Over a year ago

@vaeVictis. You probably right but I don't know if some places around the world end by 'New' or 'Old' :) Note you can also use str.match

Corralien Over a year ago

In fact, you can't @vaeVictis. startswith does not accept a regex pattern but match works.

vaeVictis Over a year ago

@Corralien My bad, I made confusion, but I was suggesting an overcomplicated solution. Thanks for pointing out.

Corralien Over a year ago

@AdiKrish. Does it solve your problem?

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