How to slice the Time in Hours and Minutes in Pandas DataFrame

Question

I am trying to split the Time column from my dataset. The Time column has a value like this '2324' instead of '23:24'. I have used this command df['MINUTES']=df['MINUTES'].str[1:3]. but it didn't work accurately, since the time column is based on 24 hours. So '2324' showing as '23:32' which is incorrect.How do I split them into proper way. Please be gentle I am just starting out in Python/DA field.

Thanks in advance! Anil

Answer 1

I am not sure where did the issue arise, since having 24 hrs time shouldn't affect the script. Here's an example that seems to match the expected output:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Example':['1242','1342','1532','1643','1758','1821','1902','0004','2324']})
df['Hour'] = df['Example'].str[:2]
df['Minute'] = df['Example'].str[2:]
df['Time'] = df['Example'].str[:2] + ":" + df['Example'].str[2:]

This generates the following output:

  Example Hour Minute   Time
0    1242   12     42  12:42
1    1342   13     42  13:42
2    1532   15     32  15:32
3    1643   16     43  16:43
4    1758   17     58  17:58
5    1821   18     21  18:21
6    1902   19     02  19:02
7    0004   00     04  00:04
8    2324   23     24  23:24

Answer 2

Here is what you can do:

df['MINUTES'].replace(['(?<=\d\d)(?=\d\d)'], ':', regex=True, inplace=True)

---

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We are basically telling python to inset a colon ':' in this gap: '(?<=\d\d)(?=\d\d)' , which is between two digits on each side.

Lets test it:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame({'MINUTES':['1234',
                              '7654',
                              '8766']})

df['MINUTES'].replace(['(?<=\d\d)(?=\d\d)'], ':',
                      regex=True,
                      inplace=True)

print(df)

Output:

  MINUTES
0   12:34
1   76:54
2   87:66