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maiios's avatar
maiios
Frequent Visitor
5 years ago

Python step is changing unrelated columns

I have a column that needs some advanced parsing, that seems to be best done with Python. However, there is another column that I am not touching in Python that is being altered. Can anyone explain what is going on under the hood?

 

 

# 'dataset' holds the input data for this script
import pandas as pd
ds = dataset
ds['ROAD_NAME_CLEAN'] = ds['ROAD_NAME'].str.extract(r'(\d+\s+)?([NnEeSsWw](\.\s|\s|\.))?([^\(]*)(\s?\(.*\))?')[3]
ds['REFERENCE_ROAD_NAME_CLEAN'] = ds['REFERENCE_ROAD_NAME'].str.extract(r'(\d+\s+)?([NnEeSsWw](\.\s|\s|\.))?([^\(]*)(\s?\(.*\))?')[3]
dataset = ds

 

 

Before:

After:

 

 

Need Help

3 Replies

    • maiios's avatar
      maiios
      Frequent Visitor
      5 years ago

      Sorry... the CENSUS_TRACT is chaning from a string to a floating point, even though the column is still a string. Basically, the CENSUS_TRACT is supposed to be a six digit number, but the decimal, and dropping the leading zeros causes issues. 

       

      I could reformat the string, but I want to understand why its happening.