Converting Index into MultiIndex (hierarchical index) in Pandas

Question

In the data I am working with the index is compound - i.e. it has both item name and a timestamp, e.g. name@domain.com|2013-05-07 05:52:51 +0200.

I want to

Answer 1

In pandas>=0.16.0, we can use the .str accessor on indices. This makes the following possible:

df.index = pd.MultiIndex.from_tuples(df.index.str.split('|').tolist())

(Note: I tried the more intuitive: pd.MultiIndex.from_arrays(df.index.str.split('|')) but for some reason that gives me errors.)