Split (explode) pandas dataframe string entry to separate rows

Question

I have a pandas dataframe in which one column of text strings contains comma-separated values. I want to split each CSV field and create a new row per entry (as

Answer 1

How about something like this:

In [55]: pd.concat([Series(row['var2'], row['var1'].split(','))              
                    for _, row in a.iterrows()]).reset_index()
Out[55]: 
  index  0
0     a  1
1     b  1
2     c  1
3     d  2
4     e  2
5     f  2

Then you just have to rename the columns