Pandas split column of lists into multiple columns

Question

I have a pandas DataFrame with one column:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.DataFrame(
    data={
        \"teams\": [
            


        

Answer 1

This solution preserves the index of the df2 DataFrame, unlike any solution that uses tolist():

df3 = df2.teams.apply(pd.Series)
df3.columns = ['team1', 'team2']

Here's the result:

  team1 team2
0    SF   NYG
1    SF   NYG
2    SF   NYG
3    SF   NYG
4    SF   NYG
5    SF   NYG
6    SF   NYG

Answer 2

Much simpler solution:

pd.DataFrame(df2["teams"].to_list(), columns=['team1', 'team2'])

Yields,

  team1 team2
-------------
0    SF   NYG
1    SF   NYG
2    SF   NYG
3    SF   NYG
4    SF   NYG
5    SF   NYG
6    SF   NYG
7    SF   NYG

If you wanted to split a column of delimited strings rather than lists, you could similarly do:

pd.DataFrame(df["teams"].str.split('<delim>', expand=True).values,
             columns=['team1', 'team2'])