I have a dataframe where one of the columns contains a list of values:
example:
type(df['col_list'].values[0]) = list
I saved this dataframe as csv file (df.to_csv('my_file.csv'))
When I load the dataframe (df = pd.read_csv('my_file.csv'))
the column which contains list of values change to string type:
type(df['col_list'].values[0]) = str
When converting to list (list(df['col_list'].values[0]) I’m getting list of characters instead of list of values.
How can I save/load dataframe which one of it’s columns contains list of values ?
>Solution :
This is due to the table being saved as CSV and serializing the values of the list. The csv format is unable to save the list object as it is. Try saving in another format df.to_pickle('test.df'). You can then read this back into a dataframe with read_pickle
Read more on saving to pickle here