How to count things within string in Python

Question

I have data where one column is a string. This column contains text, such as:

#	financial_covenants
1	Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Value is 6.00
2.	Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Decreasing from 4.00 to 3.00, Min. Fixed Charge Coverage Ratio: Value is 1.20
3	Min. Interest Coverage Ratio: Value is 3.00
4	Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Decreasing from 4.00 to 3.50, Min. Interest Coverage Ratio: Value is 3.00
5	Max. Leverage Ratio: Value is 0.6, Tangible Net Worth: 7.88e+008, Min. Fixed Charge Coverage Ratio: Value is 1.75, Min. Debt Service Coverage Ratio: Value is 2.00

I want a new column that counts how many covenants there are in "financial_covenants". As you can see, the covenants are divided by a comma. I want my final result to look like this:

financial_covenants	num_of_cov
Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Value is 6.00	1
Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Decreasing from 4.00 to 3.00, Min. Fixed Charge Coverage Ratio: Value is 1.20	2
Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Value is 3.00	1
Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Decreasing from 4.00 to 3.50, Min. Interest Coverage Ratio: Value is 3.00	2
Max. Leverage Ratio: Value is 0.6, Tangible Net Worth: 7.88e+008, Min. Fixed Charge Coverage Ratio: Value is 1.75, Min. Debt Service Coverage Ratio: Value is 2.00	4

The data set is large (3000 rows), and these phrases differ among themselves in values, such like: Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Value is 3.00 and Max. Debt to Cash Flow: Value is 6.00. I am not interested in these values, but just want to know how many covenants there are.

Do you have any idea how to do this in Python?

could you post your code? You mention columns. Does it mean you are using pandas and have your data as a Dataframe? — user20396240
– user20396240, Commented Jan 10, 2023 at 10:29

superjambon · Accepted Answer · 2023-01-10 20:15:47Z

3

Looks to me that you could use:

counts = [] # structure to store the results

for financial_covenant in financial_covenants: # your structure containing rows

    parts = financial_covenant.split(',') # this will split your sentence using commas as delimiters

    count = len(parts) # this will count the number of parts obtained

    counts.append(count) # this will store the final results in a array

print(counts) # displays [1, 2, 1, 2, 4]

edited Jan 10, 2023 at 20:15

answered Jan 10, 2023 at 10:32

superjambon

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2 Comments

wojtow Over a year ago

Looks like a useful solution, and while the workings of the code should be self-explanatory to experienced programmers (who probably wouldn't be asking the original question), it might be helpful to add additional in-code comments or external explanation about what is going on for inexperienced programmers.

superjambon Over a year ago

Fair enough, updated. Cheers

user19077881 · Accepted Answer · 2023-01-10 11:39:02Z

1

On the assumption that your data is in a pandas DataFrame called df with columns as labelled then you could use:

df['num_of_cov'] = df['financial_covenants'].map(lambda row : len(row.split(',')))

answered Jan 10, 2023 at 11:39

user19077881

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