Pandas: split column of lists of unequal length into multiple columns

Question

I have a Pandas dataframe that looks like the below:

                   codes
1                  [71020]
2                  [77085]
3                  [36415         


        

Answer 1

Another solution:

In [95]: df.codes.apply(pd.Series).add_prefix('code_')
Out[95]:
    code_0   code_1   code_2
1  71020.0      NaN      NaN
2  77085.0      NaN      NaN
3  36415.0      NaN      NaN
4  99213.0  99287.0      NaN
5  99233.0  99233.0  99233.0

Answer 2

Try:

pd.DataFrame(df.codes.values.tolist()).add_prefix('code_')

   code_0   code_1   code_2
0   71020      NaN      NaN
1   77085      NaN      NaN
2   36415      NaN      NaN
3   99213  99287.0      NaN
4   99233  99233.0  99233.0

---

Include the index

pd.DataFrame(df.codes.values.tolist(), df.index).add_prefix('code_')

   code_0   code_1   code_2
1   71020      NaN      NaN
2   77085      NaN      NaN
3   36415      NaN      NaN
4   99213  99287.0      NaN
5   99233  99233.0  99233.0

---

We can nail down all the formatting with this:

f = lambda x: 'code_{}'.format(x + 1)
pd.DataFrame(
    df.codes.values.tolist(),
    df.index, dtype=object
).fillna('').rename(columns=f)

   code_1 code_2 code_3
1   71020              
2   77085              
3   36415              
4   99213  99287       
5   99233  99233  99233