Title: Quickly Change A Column Of Strings In Pandas
Slug: pandas_change_column_of_strings
Summary: Quickly Change A Column Of Strings In Pandas
Date: 2016-04-01 12:00
Category: Python
Tags: Data Wrangling
Authors: Chris Albon

Often I need or want to change the case of all items in a column of strings (e.g. BRAZIL to Brazil, etc.). There are many ways to accomplish this but I have settled on this one as the easiest and quickest.



In [1]:

    
# Import pandas
import pandas as pd

# Create a list of first names
first_names = pd.Series(['Steve Murrey', 'Jane Fonda', 'Sara McGully', 'Mary Jane'])



In [2]:

    
# print the column
first_names









    Out[2]:





0    Steve Murrey
1      Jane Fonda
2    Sara McGully
3       Mary Jane
dtype: object



In [3]:

    
# print the column with lower case
first_names.str.lower()









    Out[3]:





0    steve murrey
1      jane fonda
2    sara mcgully
3       mary jane
dtype: object



In [4]:

    
# print the column with upper case
first_names.str.upper()









    Out[4]:





0    STEVE MURREY
1      JANE FONDA
2    SARA MCGULLY
3       MARY JANE
dtype: object



In [5]:

    
# print the column with title case
first_names.str.title()









    Out[5]:





0    Steve Murrey
1      Jane Fonda
2    Sara Mcgully
3       Mary Jane
dtype: object



In [6]:

    
# print the column split across spaces
first_names.str.split(" ")









    Out[6]:





0    [Steve, Murrey]
1      [Jane, Fonda]
2    [Sara, McGully]
3       [Mary, Jane]
dtype: object



In [7]:

    
# print the column with capitalized case
first_names.str.capitalize()









    Out[7]:





0    Steve murrey
1      Jane fonda
2    Sara mcgully
3       Mary jane
dtype: object

You get the idea. Many more string methods are avaliable here