Python pandas dataframe regex to extract substring from object

Question

I created a dataframe in python using pandas module from a csv file. Pandas by default converted string into object type. Now from that string, I wanted to create another column which I am trying to create using regex. However, because the column is object I am getting error

data = pd.read_csv(r'Desktop\train.csv')
desig = re.search(r'(\w+), (\w+). (\w+)',data['Name']).group(1)

TypeError: expected string or buffer

How can I extract the portion from the object?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You want to use the vectorised operations contained in the str methods of the dataframe:

data['desig'] = data['Name'].str.extract(r'(\w+), (\w+). (\w+)')

This will actually return a dataframe with three columns corresponding to the three groups.