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

Based on the excellent @DMulligan's solution, here is a generic vectorized (no loops) function which splits a column of a dataframe into multiple rows, and merges it back to the original dataframe. It also uses a great generic change_column_order function from this answer.

def change_column_order(df, col_name, index):
    cols = df.columns.tolist()
    cols.remove(col_name)
    cols.insert(index, col_name)
    return df[cols]

def split_df(dataframe, col_name, sep):
    orig_col_index = dataframe.columns.tolist().index(col_name)
    orig_index_name = dataframe.index.name
    orig_columns = dataframe.columns
    dataframe = dataframe.reset_index()  # we need a natural 0-based index for proper merge
    index_col_name = (set(dataframe.columns) - set(orig_columns)).pop()
    df_split = pd.DataFrame(
        pd.DataFrame(dataframe[col_name].str.split(sep).tolist())
        .stack().reset_index(level=1, drop=1), columns=[col_name])
    df = dataframe.drop(col_name, axis=1)
    df = pd.merge(df, df_split, left_index=True, right_index=True, how='inner')
    df = df.set_index(index_col_name)
    df.index.name = orig_index_name
    # merge adds the column to the last place, so we need to move it back
    return change_column_order(df, col_name, orig_col_index)

Example:

df = pd.DataFrame([['a:b', 1, 4], ['c:d', 2, 5], ['e:f:g:h', 3, 6]], 
                  columns=['Name', 'A', 'B'], index=[10, 12, 13])
df
        Name    A   B
    10   a:b     1   4
    12   c:d     2   5
    13   e:f:g:h 3   6

split_df(df, 'Name', ':')
    Name    A   B
10   a       1   4
10   b       1   4
12   c       2   5
12   d       2   5
13   e       3   6
13   f       3   6    
13   g       3   6    
13   h       3   6    

Note that it preserves the original index and order of the columns. It also works with dataframes which have non-sequential index.