Combine two columns of text in pandas dataframe

Question

I have a 20 x 4000 dataframe in Python using pandas. Two of these columns are named Year and quarter. I\'d like to create a variable called p

Answer 1

Small data-sets (< 150rows)

[''.join(i) for i in zip(df["Year"].map(str),df["quarter"])]

or slightly slower but more compact:

df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)

Larger data sets (> 150rows)

df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']

---

UPDATE: Timing graph Pandas 0.23.4

Let's test it on 200K rows DF:

In [250]: df
Out[250]:
   Year quarter
0  2014      q1
1  2015      q2

In [251]: df = pd.concat([df] * 10**5)

In [252]: df.shape
Out[252]: (200000, 2)

UPDATE: new timings using Pandas 0.19.0

Timing without CPU/GPU optimization (sorted from fastest to slowest):

In [107]: %timeit df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 131 ms per loop

In [106]: %timeit df['Year'].map(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 161 ms per loop

In [108]: %timeit df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)
10 loops, best of 3: 189 ms per loop

In [109]: %timeit df.loc[:, ['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 567 ms per loop

In [110]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 584 ms per loop

In [111]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 24.7 s per loop

Timing using CPU/GPU optimization:

In [113]: %timeit df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 53.3 ms per loop

In [114]: %timeit df['Year'].map(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 65.5 ms per loop

In [115]: %timeit df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)
10 loops, best of 3: 79.9 ms per loop

In [116]: %timeit df.loc[:, ['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 230 ms per loop

In [117]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 230 ms per loop

In [118]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 9.38 s per loop

Answer contribution by @anton-vbr