How to filter on pandas dataframe when column data type is a list

Question

I am having some trouble filtering a pandas dataframe on a column (let\'s call it column_1) whose data type is a list. Specifically, I want to return only rows such that co

Answer 1

consider the pd.Series s

s = pd.Series([[1, 2, 3], list('abcd'), [9, 8, 3], ['a', 4]])
print(s)

0       [1, 2, 3]
1    [a, b, c, d]
2       [9, 8, 3]
3          [a, 4]
dtype: object

And a testing list test

test = ['b', 3, 4]

Apply a lambda function that converts each element of s to a set and intersection with test

print(s.apply(lambda x: list(set(x).intersection(test))))

0    [3]
1    [b]
2    [3]
3    [4]
dtype: object

To use it as a mask, use bool instead of list

s.apply(lambda x: bool(set(x).intersection(test)))

0    True
1    True
2    True
3    True
dtype: bool