Issue with str.replace() and replace() pandas Dataframe

Question

I have the following data:

print(df):
Name
James (C)
Mick
Tash (C)
Liv
Nathan
Chris

I am simply trying to get

print(df):
James
Mick
Tash
Liv
Nathan
Chris

I have tried:

df['Name'] = df['Name'].str.replace(' (C)','')

Which does nothing. and then i also try:

df['Name'] = df['Name'].replace({'(C)': ''}, inplace=True)

Which clears the whole column on output.

Then I tried:

df['Name'] = df['Name'].str.replace("[(C)]", "")

Which works but it removes any C eg Chris becomes hris

I have looked and these are the main options but they all don't quite work?

jezrael · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-05 13:09:36Z

6

Use \ for escape regex, because () are special regex characters:

df['Name'] = df['Name'].str.replace(' \(C\)','')
print (df)
     Name
0   James
1    Mick
2    Tash
3     Liv
4  Nathan
5   Chris

answered Jun 5, 2020 at 13:09

jezrael

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2 Comments

great! thanks very much i think that is working. I also have a name that has Jason (C,5) so would i need to use more ` \ ` in that case too?

@SOK - then use df['Name'] = df['Name'].str.replace(' \(.*\)','') - removing all values in ()

sammywemmy · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-05 13:13:28Z

1

You could pass regex=False to turn off regex ... () are special characters in regex and str.replace works on regex by default :

df['Name'].str.replace(' (C)','', regex=False)

0     James
1      Mick
2      Tash
3       Liv
4    Nathan
5     Chris
Name: Name, dtype: object

answered Jun 5, 2020 at 13:13

sammywemmy

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thanks @sammywemmy. The first answer I got worked but i tried this and it also works so I appreciate the answer!

not a problem... @jezrael's solution allows u to extend to more use cases. My aim was just to show why your initial attempt did not work