how to convert in python negative value objects in dataframe to float

may be someone can help me. Would like to create function to convert objects to float. Tried to find some solution, but always get some errors:

# sample dataframe
d = {'price':['−$13.79', '−$ 13234.79', '$ 132834.79', 'R$ 75.900,00', 'R$ 69.375,12', '- $ 2344.92']}
df = pd.DataFrame(data=d)

I tried this code, first wanted just to find solution.

df['price'] = (df.price.str.replace("−$", "-").str.replace(r'\w+\$\s+', '').str.replace('.', '')\
                   .str.replace(',', '').astype(float)) / 100

So idea was to convert -$ to – (for negative values). Then $ to ”.

But as a result I get:

ValueError: could not convert string to float: ‘−$1379’

>Solution :

You can extract the numbers on one side, and identify whether there is a minus in the other side, then combine:

factor = np.where(df['price'].str.match(r'[−-]'), -1, 1)/100
out = (pd.to_numeric(df['price'].str.replace(r'\D', '', regex=True), errors='coerce')
         .mul(factor)
       )

output:

0       -13.79
1    -13234.79
2    132834.79
3     75900.00
4     69375.12
5     -2344.92
Name: price, dtype: float64