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I'm trying to remove any row that contains a "?" in a particular column.

I have this line:

df[~df.C.str.contains("?")]

which doesn't work. I get the following error:

error: nothing to repeat at position 0

However the following does work

df[~df.C.str.contains("abc")]

Does anyone know what it is about ? that stops it running?

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  • df[~df.C.str.contains("?",regex=False)] ? Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 14:56
  • @BradSolomon - looking for better dupe Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 14:59
  • @BradSolomon check this link stackoverflow.com/questions/54219706/… Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 15:00
  • Yep - thats a better match, no pun intended @jezrael Commented Jan 23, 2019 at 15:01

1 Answer 1

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.str.contains() expects a regular expression by default; ? is treated as a metacharacter, and using it alone will raise re.error.* Pass regex=False to search for a literal "?" character:

df[~df.C.str.contains("?", regex=False)]

* See re.compile("?")

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1 Comment

Thanks that works. Couldn't find an answer anywhere. I'll accept once timer expires

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