Replace a part of string if it is followed by /,- or * in pandas python

Question

i am quit new to Python and also in stack overflow. This platform is quit helpful for me to get what i wanted to perform code wise. I am working on a dataframe in pandas and I want to replace a part of string only if it is followed by / or - or * . the sample string is-
MAA-BOM/MADRAS .
I want to replace MAA to MADRAS, BOM to BOMBAY, MAD to MADRID . so the desired output will be like MADRAS-BOMBAY/MADRAS . I want only MAA and BOM to be replaced while MAD in MADRAS should remain intact . I was using .replace() with dictionary but this is not giving me desired output.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Build a dictionary of mappings:

m = {'MAA' : 'MADRAS', 'BOM': 'BOMBAY', 'MAD' : 'MADRID'}

Now, call str.replace on your column:

df['Col'] = df['Col'].str.replace(r'.*?(?=[/*-])', 
                        lambda x: m.get(x.group(), None))