How to apply a function to two columns of Pandas dataframe

Question

Suppose I have a df which has columns of \'ID\', \'col_1\', \'col_2\'. And I define a function :

f = lambda x, y : my_function_expres

Answer 1

The method you are looking for is Series.combine. However, it seems some care has to be taken around datatypes. In your example, you would (as I did when testing the answer) naively call

df['col_3'] = df.col_1.combine(df.col_2, func=get_sublist)

However, this throws the error:

ValueError: setting an array element with a sequence.

My best guess is that it seems to expect the result to be of the same type as the series calling the method (df.col_1 here). However, the following works:

df['col_3'] = df.col_1.astype(object).combine(df.col_2, func=get_sublist)

df

   ID   col_1   col_2   col_3
0   1   0   1   [a, b]
1   2   2   4   [c, d, e]
2   3   3   5   [d, e, f]