Remove first three characters using python

Question

I am having a data which i read in python. In a column 'title', few of the rows have extra characters like 'new' which i want to remove. i tried to find proper code but i couldnt find any, when i tried my own i got error.could anyone please help!!! Thanks in advance. title data

if indeed['title'] == indeed.loc[indeed['title'].str.startswith('new')].copy():
    indeed['title'].str[3:]

error

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-34-486b16b22bea> in <module>
----> 1 if indeed['title'] == indeed.loc[indeed['title'].str.startswith('new')].copy():
      2     indeed['title'].str[3:]

~/opt/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/generic.py in __nonzero__(self)
   1325     def __nonzero__(self):
   1326         raise ValueError(
-> 1327             f"The truth value of a {type(self).__name__} is ambiguous. "
   1328             "Use a.empty, a.bool(), a.item(), a.any() or a.all()."
   1329         )

ValueError: The truth value of a DataFrame is ambiguous. Use a.empty, a.bool(), a.item(), a.any() or a.all().

The linked duplicate has better options `indeed['title'] = indeed['title'].str.extract('(?:new)?(.*)', expand=False)` or `indeed['title'] = indeed['title'].str.replace('^new', '', regex=True)` likewise, the answer you accepted also works. — Henry Ecker, Sep 21 '21 at 21:50

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 21 '21 at 21:14

0

if i'm understanding correctly, i read the column and search for the first 3 characters =='new', if matched, return the column without those first 3 characters in string, else return the column as is.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

mydata = pd.DataFrame(['software developer','newgis developer','javascript developer','newhr partner'])
mydata.columns=['title']
mydata['newcol']=np.where(mydata['title'].str[:3]=='new', mydata['title'].str[3:], mydata['title'])

print(mydata)  
                  title                newcol
0    software developer    software developer
1      newgis developer         gis developer
2  javascript developer  javascript developer
3         newhr partner            hr partner

answered Sep 21 '21 at 21:14

barker

1,005
18
36

This does in fact do that, but it's a lot less efficient than just using the library – ifly6 Sep 21 '21 at 21:17
Henry Ecker version more efficient – kağan hazal koçdemir Sep 21 '21 at 21:20
@ifly6 Thank you so much for helping me. both the methods worked perfectly fine – imicron3 Sep 21 '21 at 21:44

Remove first three characters using python

1 Answers1