get() for default values in Pandas Series, using position

Question

Is there a way in Pandas to get a default value, when accessing a row by position? I am aware of the .get() function, but that works when searching by index.

Below is what I want to do. The DataFrame:

In [24]: df
Out[24]:
    col1
idx
20     A
21     B
22     C
23     D
24     E

Searching by index and getting a default value works fine:

In [25]: df['col1'].get(23, 'the_default_value')
Out[25]: 'D'

In [26]: df['col1'].get(28, 'the_default_value')
Out[26]: 'the_default_value'

But there doesn't appear to be an equivalent way to search by position. I can use .iloc(), but it doesn't help in getting a default value if that row is not present. Eg.

In [57]: df['col1'].iloc[2]
Out[57]: 'C'

In [58]: df['col1'].iloc[6]
...
IndexError: single positional indexer is out-of-bounds

I can set it up using try...except, or check beforehand if the value exists or not, but is there a cleaner way of doing it, like .iget() (like the .loc vs .iloc)?

Answer 1

Would something like this be considered cleaner:

df['new_index'] = np.arange(df.shape[0])
df = df.set_index('new_index')

df['col1'].get(2, 'the_default_value')

If the original index is required, then, it may be useful to use multi-index

df['new_index'] = np.arange(df.shape[0])
df = df.set_index('new_index', append=True)

df['col1'].get((pd.IndexSlice[:], 2), 'the_default_value')