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

Here's a function I wrote for this common task. It's more efficient than the Series/stack methods. Column order and names are retained.

def tidy_split(df, column, sep='|', keep=False):
    """
    Split the values of a column and expand so the new DataFrame has one split
    value per row. Filters rows where the column is missing.

    Params
    ------
    df : pandas.DataFrame
        dataframe with the column to split and expand
    column : str
        the column to split and expand
    sep : str
        the string used to split the column's values
    keep : bool
        whether to retain the presplit value as it's own row

    Returns
    -------
    pandas.DataFrame
        Returns a dataframe with the same columns as `df`.
    """
    indexes = list()
    new_values = list()
    df = df.dropna(subset=[column])
    for i, presplit in enumerate(df[column].astype(str)):
        values = presplit.split(sep)
        if keep and len(values) > 1:
            indexes.append(i)
            new_values.append(presplit)
        for value in values:
            indexes.append(i)
            new_values.append(value)
    new_df = df.iloc[indexes, :].copy()
    new_df[column] = new_values
    return new_df

With this function, the original question is as simple as:

tidy_split(a, 'var1', sep=',')