Convert list of strings to python dictinoary

November 25, 2021

I have a datastructure like this:

lst = ['name, age, sex, height, weight',
'underweight,overweight,normal',
'David, 22, M, 185, -,-,78',
'Lily, 18, F, 165,-,75,-',
..............................]

The weight is categorized as three more columns (the second row in the list). How can I write it to a pandas dataframe.

What I have done is writing the list as dataframe using :

pd.DataFrame(lst)

But this is not the whole solution, it has more complicated logic.

Help me out please

>Solution :

The output you expect is not fully clear, but you can preprocess your data with a list comprehension:

lst2 = [list(map(str.strip, e.split(','))) for e in lst] # split on commas
pd.DataFrame(lst2[2:], columns=lst2[0][:-1]+lst2[1])     # use first 2 item to build header
                                                         # rest is data

output:

    name age sex height underweight overweight normal
0  David  22   M    185           -          -     78
1   Lily  18   F    165           -         75      -

MultiIndex

Although feasible, I don’t recommend this, it be be much harder to work with:

lst2 = [list(map(str.strip, e.split(','))) for e in lst]
cols = pd.MultiIndex.from_arrays([lst2[0][:-1]+[lst2[0][-1]]*3,
                                  ['']*4+lst2[1]])
pd.DataFrame(lst2[2:], columns=cols)

output:

    name age sex height      weight                  
                        underweight overweight normal
0  David  22   M    185           -          -     78
1   Lily  18   F    165           -         75      -