Remove empty string from a list of strings

Question

I have a column in my dataframe that contains a list of names with such a structure:

df['name']=[

['anna','karen','',]
['', 'peter','mark','john']

]

I want to get rid of the empty strings i tried it with list comprehension

[[name for name in df['name'] if name.strip()] for df['name'] in df]

But that doesnt work at all, is there a way to do it? I also used the replace method from pandas by replacing the empty strings to nan but that also doesnt work as it always throws a key error...

df['name'].replace('', np.nan)

the data above is dummy data, the data i have has to be stored in lists so i can do analysis on it... — voltage
– voltage, Commented Jun 12, 2020 at 11:28

maow · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-12 11:25:01Z

3

You can do this using the filter function

df['name'] = [list(filter(None, sublist)) for sublist in df['name']]

edited Jun 12, 2020 at 11:25

answered Jun 12, 2020 at 11:22

maow

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2 Comments

timgeb Over a year ago

filter(None, sublist) is shorter.

maow Over a year ago

Cool, I wasn't aware of that :)

yatu · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-12 11:17:22Z

2

The list comprehension isn't quite right, for df['name'] in df doesn't make sense. Try with:

df['name'] = [[s for s in l if s] for l in df['name']]

df = pd.DataFrame({'name':[['anna','karen','',], ['', 'peter','mark','john']]})

df['name'] = [[s for s in l if s] for l in df['name']]
print(df)
                 name
0        [anna, karen]
1  [peter, mark, john]

answered Jun 12, 2020 at 11:17

yatu

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4 Comments

voltage Over a year ago

feel kinda dumb, thanks anyway! Btw do you know why the replace method from pandas throws keyerrors?

yatu Over a year ago

Because its ment for strings, not lists @voltage

voltage Over a year ago

I know thats why i unstacked them to series elements weird

yatu Over a year ago

Try with a column of strings and yo'll see @volt

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