Python: Replace Case Insensitive Flag Doesn't Work

In my dataframe I want to replace different ways of representing something with a single consistent string. Examples: Replace [COM, COMMERCIAL] with 'Commercial'. Replace [FALSE,

Solution 1:

Either str.replace or replacecan be used. Just make sure the pattern matches the start (^) and end ($) of the string for whole cell matches.

str.replace:

for val in valold:
    dfPA[col] = dfPA[col].str.replace(rf'^{val}$', key, case=False, regex=True)

replace:

for val in valold:
    dfPA[col] = dfPA[col].replace(rf'(?i)^{val}$', key, regex=True)

*regex=False by default for replace so the regex case insensitivity modifier will not work for replace without setting regex=True as it will literally match the characters "(?i)".

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Sample Data and Output:

import pandas as pd

dfPA = pd.DataFrame({
    'col': ['COM', 'COMMERCIAL', 'COmMErCIaL', 'Something else',
            'comical']
})

valold = ['COM', 'COMMERCIAL']
key = 'Commercial'
col = 'col'for val in valold:
    dfPA[col] = dfPA[col].str.replace(rf'^{val}$', key, case=False, regex=True)

print(dfPA)

              col
0      Commercial
1      Commercial
2      Commercial
3  Something else
4         comical