Pandas: get second character of the string, from every row

Question

I've a array of data in Pandas and I'm trying to print second character of every string in col1. I can't figure out how to do it. I can easily print the second character of the each string individually, for example:

array.col1[0][1]

However I'd like to print the second character from every row, so there would be a "list" of second characters.

I've tried

array.col1[0:][1]

but that just returns the second line as a whole of col1.

Any advice?

Answer 1

You can use str to access the string methods for the column/Series and then slice the strings as normal:

>>> df = pd.DataFrame(['foo', 'bar', 'baz'], columns=['col1'])
>>> df
  col1
0  foo
1  bar
2  baz

>>> df.col1.str[1]
0    o
1    a
2    a

This str attribute also gives you access variety of very useful vectorised string methods, many of which are instantly recognisable from Python's own assortment of built-in string methods (split, replace, etc.).