Python Pandas: selecting 1st element in array in all cells

Question

What I am trying to do is select the 1st element of each cell regardless of the number of columns or rows (they may change based on user defined criteria) and make a new pandas dataframe from the data. My actual data structure is similar to what I have listed below.

       0       1       2
0   [1, 2]  [2, 3]  [3, 6]
1   [4, 2]  [1, 4]  [4, 6]
2   [1, 2]  [2, 3]  [3, 6]
3   [4, 2]  [1, 4]  [4, 6]

I want the new dataframe to look like:

    0   1   2
0   1   2   3
1   4   1   4
2   1   2   3
3   4   1   4

The code below generates a data set similar to mine and attempts to do what I want to do in my code without success (d), and mimics what I have seen in a similar question with success(c ; however, only one column). The link to the similar, but different question is here :Python Pandas: selecting element in array column

import pandas as pd

zz = pd.DataFrame([[[1,2],[2,3],[3,6]],[[4,2],[1,4],[4,6]],
               [[1,2],[2,3],[3,6]],[[4,2],[1,4],[4,6]]])
print(zz)

x= zz.dtypes
print(x)

a = pd.DataFrame((zz.columns.values))
b = pd.DataFrame.transpose(a) 
c =zz[0].str[0] # this will give the 1st value for each cell in columns 0
d= zz[[b[0]].values].str[0] #attempt to get 1st value for each cell in all columns

Answer 1

You can use apply and for selecting first value of list use indexing with str:

print (zz.apply(lambda x: x.str[0]))
   0  1  2
0  1  2  3
1  4  1  4
2  1  2  3
3  4  1  4

Another solution with stack and unstack:

print (zz.stack().str[0].unstack())
   0  1  2
0  1  2  3
1  4  1  4
2  1  2  3
3  4  1  4

Answer 2

I would use applymap which applies the same function to each individual cell in your DataFrame

df.applymap(lambda x: x[0])

   0  1  2
0  1  2  3
1  4  1  4
2  1  2  3
3  4  1  4