Add leading \ for all special chars in pandas dataframe [duplicate]-CodePudding

I have a dataframe with multiple columns and multiple rows. In most columns there is a string with a special char ('@',':','_',...). I now want to replace all special chars with ('@',':','_',...) Right now I use

df.replace({'Name': {'_': '\_'}}, regex=True)

for this. However, doing this for all special chars is tedious. Is there an easier way to do this for all special chars?

CodePudding user response：

You might use regex as follows

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Name':['Special@character:test_']})
df['Name'] = df['Name'].replace(r'([@:_])', r'\\\1', regex=True)
print(df)

output

                         Name
0  Special\@character\:test\_

Explanation: I used capturing group which is denoted by ( and ) to get any of following @:_, then replace it with backslash (note that it needs to be escaped) \\ followed by content of what was found in said group \1