Pandas explode error - column must be scalar

Question

df.explode(['X'])


ValueError: column must be a scalar

Hi anyone could advice on this?

Answer 1

You can supply a list or tuple of column names, but only with pandas >= 1.3.0: see https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/api/pandas.DataFrame.explode.html

New in version 1.3.0: Multi-column explode

If you see this ValueError you must be using an older version of pandas

Answer 2

Use df.explode('X') instead of df.explode(['X']). Example on pandas explode page explains this.