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

Just used jiln's excellent answer from above, but needed to expand to split multiple columns. Thought I would share.

def splitDataFrameList(df,target_column,separator):
''' df = dataframe to split,
target_column = the column containing the values to split
separator = the symbol used to perform the split

returns: a dataframe with each entry for the target column separated, with each element moved into a new row. 
The values in the other columns are duplicated across the newly divided rows.
'''
def splitListToRows(row, row_accumulator, target_columns, separator):
    split_rows = []
    for target_column in target_columns:
        split_rows.append(row[target_column].split(separator))
    # Seperate for multiple columns
    for i in range(len(split_rows[0])):
        new_row = row.to_dict()
        for j in range(len(split_rows)):
            new_row[target_columns[j]] = split_rows[j][i]
        row_accumulator.append(new_row)
new_rows = []
df.apply(splitListToRows,axis=1,args = (new_rows,target_column,separator))
new_df = pd.DataFrame(new_rows)
return new_df