Create a Pandas dataframe from unequal length lengths by repeating one value

Question

I am trying to create a Pandas dataframe from a series of lists of unequal lengths. Ideally, what I'd like to do is have the values from the shorter lists repeat so that they match the longer lists that I'm trying to column bind together.

Here's is an example of what I'm trying to do:

name = ['acme corp']
id_num = ['123456']
year = ['2017']
vendors = ['toyota','honda']
paymets = ['100','5000']

name | id_num | year | vendor| payment|
acme corp | 123456 | 2017 | toyota| 100
acme corp | 123456 | 2017 | honda| 5000

In case it matters, I am running this process in a for loop that is extracting data from 1.8 million xml files and then appending the data from each into a csv. Thanks for any pointers you can offer me!

Answer 1

Use the parameter data with the list of variables, then apply a couple of transformations:

pd.DataFrame(data=[name, id_num, year, vendors, paymets])
Out[99]: 
           0      1
0  acme corp   None
1     123456   None
2       2017   None
3     toyota  honda
4        100   5000

pd.DataFrame(data=[name, id_num, year, vendors, paymets]).T.ffill()
Out[100]: 
           0       1     2       3     4
0  acme corp  123456  2017  toyota   100
1  acme corp  123456  2017   honda  5000