Str.Contains show only True values

Question

I am using str.contains on a large dataframe and I need a way such that str.contains returns the records where my str.contains function is True. (the dataframe is several thousand lines long and I am looking for 8 true responses).

Thanks!

aa = filtered_to_df.body.str.contains('AA')

aa.head(10)  
Out[312]:
15864    False  
18040    False  
22576    False  
28092    False  
32800    False  
33236    False   
38027    False  
41222    False  
46647    False  
87645    False  
Name: body, dtype: bool

Answer 1

important distinction: str.contains does not actually filter your dataframe or series, it just returns a boolean vector of the same dimension as the series you applied it on.

e.g: if you have a series like this:

my_series = pd.Series(['hello world', 'hello', 'world'])

print(my_series)

0    hello world
1          hello
2          world
dtype: object

using str.contains("hello") on this will return a series of size 3 since it will give you True / False for every cell in the series -- does that cell contain the word "hello"?

my_series = pd.Series(['hello world', 'hello', 'world'])

print(my_series.str.contains("hello"))

0     True
1     True
2    False
dtype: bool

to actually filter the dataframe or series, you need to wrap around it with a slicing operation.

my_series[my_series.str.contains("hello")]

0    hello world
1          hello
dtype: object