python – Combine two columns of text in pandas dataframe

I have a 20 x 4000 dataframe in Python using pandas. Two of these columns are named Year and quarter. I’d like to create a variable called period that makes Year = 2000 and quarter= q2 into 2000q2.

Can anyone help with that?

if both columns are strings, you can concatenate them directly:

df["period"] = df["Year"] + df["quarter"]

If one (or both) of the columns are not string typed, you should convert it (them) first,

df["period"] = df["Year"].astype(str) + df["quarter"]

Beware of NaNs when doing this!

If you need to join multiple string columns, you can use agg:

df['period'] = df[['Year', 'quarter', ...]].agg('-'.join, axis=1)

Where “-” is the separator.

df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'quarter': ['q1', 'q2']})
df['period'] = df[['Year', 'quarter']].apply(lambda x: ''.join(x), axis=1)

Yields this dataframe

   Year quarter  period
0  2014      q1  2014q1
1  2015      q2  2015q2

This method generalizes to an arbitrary number of string columns by replacing df[['Year', 'quarter']] with any column slice of your dataframe, e.g. df.iloc[:,0:2].apply(lambda x: ''.join(x), axis=1).

You can check more information about apply() method here

Small data-sets (< 150rows)

[''.join(i) for i in zip(df["Year"].map(str),df["quarter"])]

or slightly slower but more compact:

df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)

Larger data sets (> 150rows)

df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']

UPDATE: Timing graph Pandas 0.23.4

Let’s test it on 200K rows DF:

In [250]: df
Out[250]:
   Year quarter
0  2014      q1
1  2015      q2

In [251]: df = pd.concat([df] * 10**5)

In [252]: df.shape
Out[252]: (200000, 2)

UPDATE: new timings using Pandas 0.19.0

Timing without CPU/GPU optimization (sorted from fastest to slowest):

In [107]: %timeit df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 131 ms per loop

In [106]: %timeit df['Year'].map(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 161 ms per loop

In [108]: %timeit df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)
10 loops, best of 3: 189 ms per loop

In [109]: %timeit df.loc[:, ['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 567 ms per loop

In [110]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 584 ms per loop

In [111]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 24.7 s per loop

Timing using CPU/GPU optimization:

In [113]: %timeit df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 53.3 ms per loop

In [114]: %timeit df['Year'].map(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 65.5 ms per loop

In [115]: %timeit df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)
10 loops, best of 3: 79.9 ms per loop

In [116]: %timeit df.loc[:, ['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 230 ms per loop

In [117]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 230 ms per loop

In [118]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 9.38 s per loop

Answer contribution by @anton-vbr

The method cat() of the .str accessor works really well for this:

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.DataFrame([["2014", "q1"], 
...                    ["2015", "q3"]],
...                   columns=('Year', 'Quarter'))
>>> print(df)
   Year Quarter
0  2014      q1
1  2015      q3
>>> df['Period'] = df.Year.str.cat(df.Quarter)
>>> print(df)
   Year Quarter  Period
0  2014      q1  2014q1
1  2015      q3  2015q3

cat() even allows you to add a separator so, for example, suppose you only have integers for year and period, you can do this:

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.DataFrame([[2014, 1],
...                    [2015, 3]],
...                   columns=('Year', 'Quarter'))
>>> print(df)
   Year Quarter
0  2014       1
1  2015       3
>>> df['Period'] = df.Year.astype(str).str.cat(df.Quarter.astype(str), sep='q')
>>> print(df)
   Year Quarter  Period
0  2014       1  2014q1
1  2015       3  2015q3

Joining multiple columns is just a matter of passing either a list of series or a dataframe containing all but the first column as a parameter to str.cat() invoked on the first column (Series):

>>> df = pd.DataFrame(
...     [['USA', 'Nevada', 'Las Vegas'],
...      ['Brazil', 'Pernambuco', 'Recife']],
...     columns=['Country', 'State', 'City'],
... )
>>> df['AllTogether'] = df['Country'].str.cat(df[['State', 'City']], sep=' - ')
>>> print(df)
  Country       State       City                   AllTogether
0     USA      Nevada  Las Vegas      USA - Nevada - Las Vegas
1  Brazil  Pernambuco     Recife  Brazil - Pernambuco - Recife

Do note that if your pandas dataframe/series has null values, you need to include the parameter na_rep to replace the NaN values with a string, otherwise the combined column will default to NaN.

Use of a lamba function this time with string.format().

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'Quarter': ['q1', 'q2']})
print df
df['YearQuarter'] = df[['Year','Quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
print df

  Quarter  Year
0      q1  2014
1      q2  2015
  Quarter  Year YearQuarter
0      q1  2014      2014q1
1      q2  2015      2015q2

This allows you to work with non-strings and reformat values as needed.

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'Quarter': [1, 2]})
print df.dtypes
print df

df['YearQuarter'] = df[['Year','Quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}q{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
print df

Quarter     int64
Year       object
dtype: object
   Quarter  Year
0        1  2014
1        2  2015
   Quarter  Year YearQuarter
0        1  2014      2014q1
1        2  2015      2015q2

Although the @silvado answer is good if you change df.map(str) to df.astype(str) it will be faster:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'quarter': ['q1', 'q2']})

In [131]: %timeit df["Year"].map(str)
10000 loops, best of 3: 132 us per loop

In [132]: %timeit df["Year"].astype(str)
10000 loops, best of 3: 82.2 us per loop

Let us suppose your dataframe is df with columns Year and Quarter.

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Quarter':'q1 q2 q3 q4'.split(), 'Year':'2000'})

Suppose we want to see the dataframe;

df
>>>  Quarter    Year
   0    q1      2000
   1    q2      2000
   2    q3      2000
   3    q4      2000

Finally, concatenate the Year and the Quarter as follows.

df['Period'] = df['Year'] + ' ' + df['Quarter']

You can now print df to see the resulting dataframe.

df
>>>  Quarter    Year    Period
    0   q1      2000    2000 q1
    1   q2      2000    2000 q2
    2   q3      2000    2000 q3
    3   q4      2000    2000 q4

If you do not want the space between the year and quarter, simply remove it by doing;

df['Period'] = df['Year'] + df['Quarter']

generalising to multiple columns, why not:

columns = ['whatever', 'columns', 'you', 'choose']
df['period'] = df[columns].astype(str).sum(axis=1)

Here is an implementation that I find very versatile:

In [1]: import pandas as pd 

In [2]: df = pd.DataFrame([[0, 'the', 'quick', 'brown'],
   ...:                    [1, 'fox', 'jumps', 'over'], 
   ...:                    [2, 'the', 'lazy', 'dog']],
   ...:                   columns=['c0', 'c1', 'c2', 'c3'])

In [3]: def str_join(df, sep, *cols):
   ...:     from functools import reduce
   ...:     return reduce(lambda x, y: x.astype(str).str.cat(y.astype(str), sep=sep), 
   ...:                   [df[col] for col in cols])
   ...: 

In [4]: df['cat'] = str_join(df, '-', 'c0', 'c1', 'c2', 'c3')

In [5]: df
Out[5]: 
   c0   c1     c2     c3                cat
0   0  the  quick  brown  0-the-quick-brown
1   1  fox  jumps   over   1-fox-jumps-over
2   2  the   lazy    dog     2-the-lazy-dog

more efficient is

def concat_df_str1(df):
    """ run time: 1.3416s """
    return pd.Series([''.join(row.astype(str)) for row in df.values], index=df.index)

and here is a time test:

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

from time import time


def concat_df_str1(df):
    """ run time: 1.3416s """
    return pd.Series([''.join(row.astype(str)) for row in df.values], index=df.index)


def concat_df_str2(df):
    """ run time: 5.2758s """
    return df.astype(str).sum(axis=1)


def concat_df_str3(df):
    """ run time: 5.0076s """
    df = df.astype(str)
    return df[0] + df[1] + df[2] + df[3] + df[4] + \
           df[5] + df[6] + df[7] + df[8] + df[9]


def concat_df_str4(df):
    """ run time: 7.8624s """
    return df.astype(str).apply(lambda x: ''.join(x), axis=1)


def main():
    df = pd.DataFrame(np.zeros(1000000).reshape(100000, 10))
    df = df.astype(int)

    time1 = time()
    df_en = concat_df_str4(df)
    print('run time: %.4fs' % (time() - time1))
    print(df_en.head(10))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

final, when sum(concat_df_str2) is used, the result is not simply concat, it will trans to integer.

Using zip could be even quicker:

df["period"] = [''.join(i) for i in zip(df["Year"].map(str),df["quarter"])]

Graph:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import timeit
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from collections import defaultdict

df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'quarter': ['q1', 'q2']})

myfuncs = {
"df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']":
    lambda: df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter'],
"df['Year'].map(str) + df['quarter']":
    lambda: df['Year'].map(str) + df['quarter'],
"df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)":
    lambda: df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter),
"df.loc[:, ['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)":
    lambda: df.loc[:, ['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1),
"df[['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)":
    lambda: df[['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1),
    "df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)":
    lambda: df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1),
    "[''.join(i) for i in zip(dataframe['Year'].map(str),dataframe['quarter'])]":
    lambda: [''.join(i) for i in zip(df["Year"].map(str),df["quarter"])]
}

d = defaultdict(dict)
step = 10
cont = True
while cont:
    lendf = len(df); print(lendf)
    for k,v in myfuncs.items():
        iters = 1
        t = 0
        while t < 0.2:
            ts = timeit.repeat(v, number=iters, repeat=3)
            t = min(ts)
            iters *= 10
        d[k][lendf] = t/iters
        if t > 2: cont = False
    df = pd.concat([df]*step)

pd.DataFrame(d).plot().legend(loc='upper center', bbox_to_anchor=(0.5, -0.15))
plt.yscale('log'); plt.xscale('log'); plt.ylabel('seconds'); plt.xlabel('df rows')
plt.show()

This solution uses an intermediate step compressing two columns of the DataFrame to a single column containing a list of the values. This works not only for strings but for all kind of column-dtypes

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'quarter': ['q1', 'q2']})
df['list']=df[['Year','quarter']].values.tolist()
df['period']=df['list'].apply(''.join)
print(df)

Result:

   Year quarter        list  period
0  2014      q1  [2014, q1]  2014q1
1  2015      q2  [2015, q2]  2015q2

Here is my summary of the above solutions to concatenate / combine two columns with int and str value into a new column, using a separator between the values of columns. Three solutions work for this purpose.

# be cautious about the separator, some symbols may cause "SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal".
# e.g. ";;" as separator would raise the SyntaxError

separator = "&&" 

# pd.Series.str.cat() method does not work to concatenate / combine two columns with int value and str value. This would raise "AttributeError: Can only use .cat accessor with a 'category' dtype"

df["period"] = df["Year"].map(str) + separator + df["quarter"]
df["period"] = df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{} && {}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
df["period"] = df.apply(lambda x: f'{x["Year"]} && {x["quarter"]}', axis=1)

As many have mentioned previously, you must convert each column to string and then use the plus operator to combine two string columns. You can get a large performance improvement by using NumPy.

%timeit df['Year'].values.astype(str) + df.quarter
71.1 ms ± 3.76 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

%timeit df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']
565 ms ± 22.3 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

my take….

listofcols = ['col1','col2','col3']
df['combined_cols'] = ''

for column in listofcols:
    df['combined_cols'] = df['combined_cols'] + ' ' + df[column]
'''

Use .combine_first.

df['Period'] = df['Year'].combine_first(df['Quarter'])

def madd(x):
    """Performs element-wise string concatenation with multiple input arrays.

    Args:
        x: iterable of np.array.

    Returns: np.array.
    """
    for i, arr in enumerate(x):
        if type(arr.item(0)) is not str:
            x[i] = x[i].astype(str)
    return reduce(np.core.defchararray.add, x)

For example:

data = list(zip([2000]*4, ['q1', 'q2', 'q3', 'q4']))
df = pd.DataFrame(data=data, columns=['Year', 'quarter'])
df['period'] = madd([df[col].values for col in ['Year', 'quarter']])

df

    Year    quarter period
0   2000    q1  2000q1
1   2000    q2  2000q2
2   2000    q3  2000q3
3   2000    q4  2000q4

One can use assign method of DataFrame:

df= (pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'quarter': ['q1', 'q2']}).
  assign(period=lambda x: x.Year+x.quarter ))