Searching for multiple strings over multiple columns in Python

Question

I am trying to find multiple patterns (the first 3 elements of a string) over multiple columns. Up till now, I am able to find one pattern over multiple columns with the following code:

df['C07_location'] = df[colnames_locations].applymap(lambda x: 'C07' in x).any(1).astype(int)

In this case, it looks for the string C07 in all the columns with locations. However I have 30 of these locations I want to look for, which looks something like this:

unique_locations = ['C07', 'C08', 'C11', 'C14']

This is an example of what the original dataset looks like:

    location_1     location_2      location_3   ...
0         C110           C072             NaN 
1          NaN            NaN             NaN
2         C147           C144            C112
3         C082           C079             NaN
4         C071           C110            C145
...        ...            ...             ...

I would like to create a new column for each unique location, with the end result looking like this:

    location_1     location_2      location_3   C07_location  C08_location  C11_location  ...
0         C110           C072             NaN              1             0             1 
1          NaN            NaN             NaN              0             0             0
2         C147           C144            C112              0             0             1
3         C082           C079             NaN              1             1             0
4         C071           C110            C145              1             0             1
...        ...            ...             ...            ...           ...           ...

Any guidance in the right direction is much appreciated!

Answer 1

If i understood your question correctly, you want to create separate columns for unique_locations. If that is the case then you can simply use a for loop

for loc in unique_locations:
   df[loc+'_location']=(df[colnames_locations].values == loc).any(1).astype(int)