How to convert numbers represented as characters for short into numeric in Python

Question

I have a column in my data frame which has values like \'3.456B\' which actually stands for 3.456 Billion (and similar notation for Million). How to convert this string form

Answer 1

Assuming all entries have a letter at the end, you can do this:

d = {'K': 1000, 'M': 1000000, 'B': 1000000000}
df.loc[:, 'Market Cap'] = pd.to_numeric(df['Market Cap'].str[:-1]) * \
    df['Market Cap'].str[-1].replace(d)

This converts everything but the last character into a numeric value, then multiplies it by the number equivalent to the letter in the last character.