Removing multiple phrases from string column efficiently

Question

I want to remove the few words in a column and I have written below code which is working fine

finaldata['keyword'] = finaldata['keyword'].str.replace("Washington Times", "")
finaldata['keyword'] = finaldata['keyword'].str.replace("Washington Post", "")
finaldata['keyword'] = finaldata['keyword'].str.replace("Mail The Globe", "")

Now I have around 30 words to remove but I can't repeat this line of code 30 times Is there any way to solve my issue if yes please guide me

Answer 1

You can use regex here and reduce this to a single replace call.

words = ["Washington Times", "Washington Post", "Mail The Globe"]
p = '|'.join(words)

finaldata['keyword'] = finaldata['keyword'].str.replace(p, '')

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For performance, if the data has no NaNs, you should consider using a list comprehension.

import re

p2 = re.compile(p)
finaldata['keyword'] = [p2.replace('', text) for text in finaldata['keyword']]

If there are NaNs, you can use select and use loc to reassign:

m = finaldata['keyword'].notna()
finaldata.loc[m, 'keyword'] = [
    p2.replace('', text) for text in finaldata.loc[m, 'keyword'].tolist()]