Split (explode) pandas dataframe string entry to separate rows

Question

I have a pandas dataframe in which one column of text strings contains comma-separated values. I want to split each CSV field and create a new row per entry (as

Answer 1

I have come up with the following solution to this problem:

def iter_var1(d):
    for _, row in d.iterrows():
        for v in row["var1"].split(","):
            yield (v, row["var2"])

new_a = DataFrame.from_records([i for i in iter_var1(a)],
        columns=["var1", "var2"])