Creating several new concatenated string columns--how to make pythonic?

Question

When I was first starting out with Python, the below code was acceptable to me, because it got the job done. But currently re-writing and cleaning up this code for future use--is there a better way to make this more Pythonic via a loop or function?

movements['Agency.1_2'] = movements['Agency.1'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.2']
movements['Agency.2_3'] = movements['Agency.2'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.3']
movements['Agency.3_4'] = movements['Agency.3'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.4']
movements['Agency.4_5'] = movements['Agency.4'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.5']
movements['Agency.5_6'] = movements['Agency.5'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.6']
movements['Agency.6_7'] = movements['Agency.6'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.7']
movements['Agency.7_8'] = movements['Agency.7'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.8']
movements['Agency.8_9'] = movements['Agency.8'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.9']
movements['Agency.9_10'] = movements['Agency.9'] + ' to ' + movements['Agency.10']

Ultimately, this code spits out a bunch of new columns with concatenated strings with a ' to ' in the middle, e.g:

+-------+------------+------------+
|  id   | Agency.1_2 | Agency.2_3 | 
+-------+------------+------------+
|   1   |   a to b   |   b to c   | 
|   2   |   b to d   |   f to g   | 
|   3   |   z to y   |            | 
+-------+------------+------------+

The current code works, so nbd if there isn't a better way. But would love to learn how to do this so I can push myself. Thanks!

RedKnite · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-21 22:18:39Z

2

for i in range(10):
    movements[f"Agency.{i}_{i+1}"] = f"{movements[f'Agency.{i}']} to {movements[f'Agency.{i+1}']}"

edited May 21, 2020 at 22:18

answered May 21, 2020 at 20:54

RedKnite

1,57114 silver badges28 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

Colin Sorensen Over a year ago

Thanks! This got me within range of a code that worked! for i in range(10): a[f"Agency.{i+1}_{i+2}"] = a[f"Agency.{i+1}"] + ' to ' + a[f"Agency.{i+2}"]

RedKnite Over a year ago

@ColinSorensen I'm glad! Could you tell me why what I used didn't work so I can try to improve it?

Colin Sorensen Over a year ago

It was creating some strange string values in the cells without any "to"...e.g. this is copy/pasted: ''0 foo\n1 bar\n2 baz\n3."

RedKnite Over a year ago

Ah! I was missing the final curly brace! You can use which ever you like, but mine should work now.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Creating several new concatenated string columns--how to make pythonic?

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related