Extract first n characters from left of column in pandas python

First n characters from left of the column in pandas python can be extracted in a roundabout way. Let’s see how to return first n characters from left of column in pandas python with an example.

We have explored two ways

• Extract or return first n characters of the pandas column using subsetting
• Extract or return first n character of the pandas column using slice() function with stop parameters

First let’s create a dataframe

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

#Create a DataFrame
df1 = {
    'State':['Arizona AZ','Georgia GG','Newyork NY','Indiana IN','Florida FL'],
   'Score':[62,47,55,74,31]}

df1 = pd.DataFrame(df1,columns=['State','Score'])
df1

df1 will be

Extract first n Characters from left of column in pandas:

Method 1:

str[:n] is used to get first n characters of column in pandas

df1['StateInitial'] = df1['State'].str[:2]
print(df1)	

str[:2] is used to get first two characters of column in pandas and it is stored in another column namely StateInitial so the resultant dataframe will be

Method 2:

Slice() function with stop parameters value 2 will extract the first 2 characters of the column as shown below.

### Extract first n character of the column in pandas
##Method 2
df1['StateInitial'] = df1['State'].str.slice(stop=2)
df1

Result: