Update pandas DataFrame with .str.replace() vs .replace()

Question

I have a column in my pandas Dataframe df that contains a string with some trailing hex-encoded NULLs (\\x00). At least I think that it\'s that. When I tried to replace them wit

Answer 1

The former looks for exact matches, the latter looks for matches in any part of the string, which is why the latter works for you.

The str methods are synonymous with the standard string equivalents but are vectorised