convert a column in a python pandas from STRING MONTH into INT

Question

In Python 2.7.11 & Pandas 0.18.1:

If we have the following csv file:

YEAR,MONTH,ID
2011,JAN,1
2011,FEB,1
2011,MAR,1

Is there an

Answer 1

Following Max's last point; create the same thing but rely on your local dataframe's way of encoding months:

# create mapping
d = dict((v,k) for k,v in zip(range(1, 13), df.Month.unique()))
# create column
df['month_index'] = df['Month'].map(d)