Pandas: Why does slice(0,5) work, but slice(0,-1) does not?

Asked Oct 04 '19 at 18:08

Active Oct 04 '19 at 18:08

Viewed 41 times

Consider the Series data2:

data2.head()

0    20075E,
1    20109C,
2    202217,
3    20219E,
4    20217C,
Name: 0, dtype: object

The code:

data3 = data2.str.slice(0,5)
data3.head()

Works just fine, and produces:

0    20075
1    20109
2    20221
3    20219
4    20217
Name: 0, dtype: object

But running

data3 = data2.str.slice(0,-1)

Appears to do nothing. Why?

asked Oct 04 '19 at 18:08

Dirk

It does, it chomps off the last character, so it will produce `20075` instead of `20075E`. – Willem Van Onsem Oct 04 '19 at 18:10
If you want to remove the last two characters, you can use `data2.str.slice(0,-2)` – Willem Van Onsem Oct 04 '19 at 18:11
Possible duplicate of [Understanding slice notation](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/509211/understanding-slice-notation) – Celius Stingher Oct 04 '19 at 18:13
6

You probably didn't notice that the last character in your records is `,` – Michael Gardner Oct 04 '19 at 18:14
1

Michael, I did not. Thanks! – Dirk Oct 04 '19 at 18:23

0 Answers0