pandas extracting substring from column

Question

Suppose I have a df:

df = pd.DataFrame({'col': ['ABCXDEF', 'ABCYDEF']})

How can I extract the string that is surrounded by ABC & the first occurrence of DEF? Desired output:

    col
0   X
1   Y

Note that I don't want a solution based on exact positions, like:

df.col.str[3:4]

Sorry my bad. Incomplete question: but it needs to be the first occurence of DEF. For example, if the string is ABCXDEFDEFDEF. — CHRD
– CHRD, Commented Jun 18, 2020 at 9:18

Roy2012 · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-18 09:19:34Z

3

(update: look for the first occurrence of 'DEF') Use this regex:

df = pd.DataFrame({'col': ['ABCXDEF', 'ABCYDEFDEFDEF']})
print(df.col.str.extract(r"ABC(.*?)DEF"))

The result is:

   0
0  X
1  Y

answered Jun 18, 2020 at 9:19

Roy2012

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