Combine Two Text Columns of pandas DataFrame in Python (Example)

In this Python article you’ll learn how to join text in columns of a pandas DataFrame.

The article will consist of these contents:

Here’s how to do it:

Example Data & Libraries

We first need to import the pandas library, to be able to use the functions and commands that are contained in the library:

import pandas as pd                                    # Load pandas

The following data is used as basement for this Python programming language tutorial:

data = pd.DataFrame({'x1':['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e'],  # Create example DataFrame
                     'x2':['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']})
print(data)                                           # Print example DataFrame

As you can see based on Table 1, our example data is a DataFrame and is made of five rows and the two variables “x1” and “x2”. Both variables contain text, i.e. alphabetical letters.

Example: Join Two Text Columns as New DataFrame Variable

In this example, I’ll illustrate how to combine two pandas DataFrame variables in a new column.

For this, we can use the + sign as shown below:

data_new = data.copy()                                # Create copy of DataFrame
data_new['new'] = data_new['x1'] + data_new['x2']     # Concatenate columns
print(data_new)                                       # Print updated DataFrame

As shown in Table 2, the previous Python programming code has created a new pandas DataFrame object containing three columns. The first two columns are our input data and the third column is a combination of our two input variables x1 and x2.

Video & Further Resources on this Topic

Would you like to learn more about combining two text columns of a pandas DataFrame? Then you might have a look at the following video that I have published on my YouTube channel. I’m explaining the topics of this post in more detail.

If you need further info on the content of this tutorial, I can recommend watching the following video on the YouTube channel of Joe James. He shows further examples for the combination of multiple pandas DataFrame variables.

Also, you could have a look at the related articles on this website:

• Check If String Contains Any Letters from Alphabet
• Replace NaN by Empty String in pandas DataFrame in Python
• Operate on pandas DataFrames in Python
• Modify & Edit pandas DataFrames in Python
• Introduction to the pandas Library in Python
• All Python Programming Examples

At this point you should know how to merge text in columns of a pandas DataFrame in the Python programming language. Don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments, in case you have further questions.