How to combine multiple rows of strings into one using pandas?

Question

I have a DataFrame with multiple rows. Is there any way in which they can be combined to form one string?

For example:

     words
0    I, will, hereby
1         


        

Answer 1

How about traditional python's join? And, it's faster.

In [209]: ', '.join(df.words)
Out[209]: 'I, will, hereby, am, gonna, going, far, to, do, this'

Timings in Dec, 2016 on pandas 0.18.1

In [214]: df.shape
Out[214]: (6, 1)

In [215]: %timeit df.words.str.cat(sep=', ')
10000 loops, best of 3: 72.2 µs per loop

In [216]: %timeit ', '.join(df.words)
100000 loops, best of 3: 14 µs per loop

In [217]: df = pd.concat([df]*10000, ignore_index=True)

In [218]: df.shape
Out[218]: (60000, 1)

In [219]: %timeit df.words.str.cat(sep=', ')
100 loops, best of 3: 5.2 ms per loop

In [220]: %timeit ', '.join(df.words)
100 loops, best of 3: 1.91 ms per loop