Converting pandas column of comma-separated strings into integers

Question

I have a data frame that contains a column with comma separated values. I would like to convert the string values in that column to integers.

I am newish to coding in general so a brief explanation of what is happening would be massively appreciated. If you have time.

I have tried the following code.

df['col3'].str.strip(',').astype(int)

df
col1 col2 col3
1    x    12,123
2    x    1,123
3    y    45,998

df
col1 col2 col3
1    x    12123
2    x    1123
3    y    45998

Answer 1

I think your solution should actually be:

df['col3'] = df.col3.str.split(',').str.join('').astype(int)

    col1 col2   col3
0     1    x  12123
1     2    x   1123
2     3    y  45998

As str.strip only strips from the left and right sides.

Explanation

• str: Allows for vectorized string functions for Series
• split: Will split each element in the list according to some pattern, , in this case
• join: will join elements in the now Series of lists with a passed delimeter, '' here as you want to create ints.

And finally .astype(int) to turn each string into an integer

Answer 2

There are already answers to this question but , i would like to add a another solution:

DataFrame:

>>> df
   col1 col2    col3
0     1    x  12,123
1     2    x   1,123
2     3    y  45,998

Try simplest by using str.replace method and you are all done:

>>> df['col3'] = df['col3'].str.replace(",", "")
# df['col3'] = df['col3'].str.replace(",", "").astype(int) <- cast to int
>>> df
   col1 col2   col3
0     1    x  12123
1     2    x   1123
2     3    y  45998

OR

another using df.replace along with regex method as Regex substitution is performed under the hood with re.sub. The rules for substitution for re.sub are the same.

>>> df['col3'] = df['col3'].replace(',', '', regex=True)
>>> df
   col1 col2   col3
0     1    x  12123
1     2    x   1123
2     3    y  45998

Answer 3

Brief explanation:

df['col3'].str.strip(',').str.join('').astype(int)

• df['col3'] generates a pandas.Series from the values of col3
• _______.str can be understood as a cast-to-string, usually means you would like to use a string method to the contents of your series
• _____.str.strip(',') uses the strip method: break a string into substrings, using the separator provided as the parameter used to distinguish when one substring ends and when the next one begins
• _____.str.strip(',').str.join('') takes the substrings generated by the split and concatenates them together (effectively you're just removing the separator)
• ____.astype(int) casts your result to an int

Credit to nixon on including the join to generate the actual desired output. Hope this helps, happy coding!