Business
Jobs
  • About Us
  • Solutions
    • Job Postings
      Post your job and receive qualified candidates in 48h.
    • Candidate Assessments
      500+ technical and psychological tests, plus anti-fraud.
    • Headhunting
      Tailor-made executive search from start to finish.
    • Payroll + EOR
      Payroll dispersal and EOR across 15+ LATAM countries.
  • Pricing
  • Jobs

0

491
Views
How to remove a row from pandas dataframe based on the length of the column values?

In the following pandas.DataFframe:

df = 
    alfa    beta   ceta
    a,b,c   c,d,e  g,e,h
    a,b     d,e,f  g,h,k
    j,k     c,k,l  f,k,n

How to drop the rows in which the column values for alfa has more than 2 elements? This can be done using the length function, I know but not finding a specific answer.

df = df[['alfa'].str.split(',').map(len) < 3]
over 4 years ago · Santiago Trujillo
3 answers
Answer question

0

You can do that test to each row in turn using pandas.DataFrame.apply()

print(df[df['alfa'].apply(lambda x: len(x.split(',')) < 3)])

Gives:

  alfa   beta   ceta
1  a,b  d,e,f  g,h,k
2  j,k  c,k,l  f,k,n
over 4 years ago · Santiago Trujillo Report

0

Here is an option that is the easiest to remember and still embracing the DataFrame which is the "bleeding heart" of Pandas:

1) Create a new column in the dataframe with a value for the length:

df['length'] = df.alfa.str.len()

2) Index using the new column:

df = df[df.length < 3]

Then the comparison to the above timings, which are not really relevant in this case as the data is very small, and usually is less important than how likely you're going to remember how to do something and not having to interrupt your workflow:

step 1:

%timeit df['length'] = df.alfa.str.len()

359 µs ± 6.83 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000 loops each)

step 2:

df = df[df.length < 3]

627 µs ± 76.9 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000 loops each)

The good news is that when the size grows, time does not grow linearly. For example doing the same operation with 30,000 rows of data takes about 3ms (so 10,000x data, 3x speed increase). Pandas DataFrame is like a train, takes energy to get it going (so not great for small things under absolute comparison, but objectively does not matter much does it...as with small data things are fast anyways).

over 4 years ago · Santiago Trujillo Report

0

This is the numpy version of @NickilMaveli's answer.

mask = np.core.defchararray.count(df.alfa.values.astype(str), ',') <= 1
pd.DataFrame(df.values[mask], df.index[mask], df.columns)

  alfa   beta   ceta
1  a,b  d,e,f  g,h,k
2  j,k  c,k,l  f,k,n

naive timing

enter image description here

over 4 years ago · Santiago Trujillo Report
Answer question
Find remote jobs

Discover the new way to find a job!

Top jobs
Top job categories
Business
Post vacancy Pricing Sales
Legal
Terms and conditions Privacy policy
© 2026 PeakU Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Andres GPT
Show me some job opportunities
There's an error!