pandas - splitting at underscore in python and storing the first value

Question

I have a pandas data frame like df with a column construct_name

construct_name
aaaa_t1_2    
cccc_t4_10
bbbb_g3_3

and so on. I want to first split all the names at the underscore and store the first element (aaaa,cccc, etc.) as another column name.

Expected output

construct_name  name
aaaa_t1_2       aaaa
cccc_t4_10      bbbb

and so on.

I tried the following df['construct_name'].map(lambda row:row.split("_")) and it gives me a list like

[aaaa,t1,2]
[cccc,t4,10]

and so on

But when I do

df['construct_name'].map(lambda row:row.split("_"))[0] to get the first element of the list I get an error. Can you suggest a fix. Thanks

Answer 1

Just use the vectorised str method split and use integer indexing on the list to get the first element:

In [228]:

df['first'] = df['construct_name'].str.split('_').str[0]
df
Out[228]:
  construct_name first
0      aaaa_t1_2  aaaa
1     cccc_t4_10  cccc
2      bbbb_g3_3  bbbb