Pandas change column to string

Question

I have a dataframe and when I do df.dtypes in shows the column is an object

I do df["column_name"] = df["column_name"].astype(str)

and again check df.dtypes it still shows the column type as object. Any idea bow to fix this.

When I do df['column_name'].to_string().dtype

I get an error AttributeError: 'unicode' object has no attribute 'dtype'

Try df["column_name"] = df["column_name"].astype("string") — bigbounty
– bigbounty, Commented Aug 7, 2020 at 20:51
Refer pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/user_guide/text.html for different ways to converting to string — bigbounty
– bigbounty, Commented Aug 7, 2020 at 21:00
if your try print(df['column_name'].dtypes) - what do you get? — Cmagelssen
– Cmagelssen, Commented Aug 7, 2020 at 21:18

Cmagelssen · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-07 21:02:27Z

1

In Pandas, there are only these datatypes: boolean, integer, float, datetime and object. Objects are almost always strings but can be any Python object. This is the reason why df.dtypes shows an object.

answered Aug 7, 2020 at 21:02

Cmagelssen

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4 Comments

John Constantine Over a year ago

I want to convert it to string as I'm unable to do a join on the column. But the conversion doesn't work.

John Constantine Over a year ago

it's just a regular dataframe and converting the object to string isn't working how it usually works for some reason.

Cmagelssen Over a year ago

I have had similar issues. One time I had to convert it to .astype(int) before .astype(str). Other types it has been due to missing values

John Constantine Over a year ago

I updated the question with some new info not sure if that helps.

José De Souza · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-07 21:26:00Z

0

Series can be converted to the string datatype, give this a try:

df['column_name'] = pd.Series(df['column_name'], dtype="string")

Or give this a try

df['column_name']=df.column_name.convert_dtypes()

edited Aug 7, 2020 at 21:26

answered Aug 7, 2020 at 20:55

José De Souza

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1 Comment

Cmagelssen Over a year ago

@JohnConstantine See my answer

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