Combine two columns of text in pandas dataframe

If both columns are strings, you can concatenate them directly:

df["period"] = df["Year"] + df["quarter"]

If one (or both) of the columns are not string typed, you should convert it (them) first,

df["period"] = df["Year"].astype(str) + df["quarter"]

Beware of NaNs when doing this!

If you need to join multiple string columns, you can use agg:

df['period'] = df[['Year', 'quarter', ...]].agg('-'.join, axis=1)

Where "-" is the separator.

Small data-sets (< 150rows)

[''.join(i) for i in zip(df["Year"].map(str),df["quarter"])]

or slightly slower but more compact:

df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)

Larger data sets (> 150rows)

df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']

UPDATE: Timing graph Pandas 0.23.4

Let's test it on 200K rows DF:

In [250]: df
Out[250]:
   Year quarter
0  2014      q1
1  2015      q2

In [251]: df = pd.concat([df] * 10**5)

In [252]: df.shape
Out[252]: (200000, 2)

UPDATE: new timings using Pandas 0.19.0

Timing without CPU/GPU optimization (sorted from fastest to slowest):

In [107]: %timeit df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 131 ms per loop

In [106]: %timeit df['Year'].map(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 161 ms per loop

In [108]: %timeit df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)
10 loops, best of 3: 189 ms per loop

In [109]: %timeit df.loc[:, ['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 567 ms per loop

In [110]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 584 ms per loop

In [111]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 24.7 s per loop

Timing using CPU/GPU optimization:

In [113]: %timeit df['Year'].astype(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 53.3 ms per loop

In [114]: %timeit df['Year'].map(str) + df['quarter']
10 loops, best of 3: 65.5 ms per loop

In [115]: %timeit df.Year.str.cat(df.quarter)
10 loops, best of 3: 79.9 ms per loop

In [116]: %timeit df.loc[:, ['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 230 ms per loop

In [117]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].astype(str).sum(axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 230 ms per loop

In [118]: %timeit df[['Year','quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
1 loop, best of 3: 9.38 s per loop

Answer contribution by @anton-vbr

df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'quarter': ['q1', 'q2']})
df['period'] = df[['Year', 'quarter']].apply(lambda x: ''.join(x), axis=1)

Yields this dataframe

   Year quarter  period
0  2014      q1  2014q1
1  2015      q2  2015q2

This method generalizes to an arbitrary number of string columns by replacing df[['Year', 'quarter']] with any column slice of your dataframe, e.g. df.iloc[:,0:2].apply(lambda x: ''.join(x), axis=1).

You can check more information about apply() method here

The method cat() of the .str accessor works really well for this:

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.DataFrame([["2014", "q1"], 
...                    ["2015", "q3"]],
...                   columns=('Year', 'Quarter'))
>>> print(df)
   Year Quarter
0  2014      q1
1  2015      q3
>>> df['Period'] = df.Year.str.cat(df.Quarter)
>>> print(df)
   Year Quarter  Period
0  2014      q1  2014q1
1  2015      q3  2015q3

cat() even allows you to add a separator so, for example, suppose you only have integers for year and period, you can do this:

>>> import pandas as pd
>>> df = pd.DataFrame([[2014, 1],
...                    [2015, 3]],
...                   columns=('Year', 'Quarter'))
>>> print(df)
   Year Quarter
0  2014       1
1  2015       3
>>> df['Period'] = df.Year.astype(str).str.cat(df.Quarter.astype(str), sep='q')
>>> print(df)
   Year Quarter  Period
0  2014       1  2014q1
1  2015       3  2015q3

Joining multiple columns is just a matter of passing either a list of series or a dataframe containing all but the first column as a parameter to str.cat() invoked on the first column (Series):

>>> df = pd.DataFrame(
...     [['USA', 'Nevada', 'Las Vegas'],
...      ['Brazil', 'Pernambuco', 'Recife']],
...     columns=['Country', 'State', 'City'],
... )
>>> df['AllTogether'] = df['Country'].str.cat(df[['State', 'City']], sep=' - ')
>>> print(df)
  Country       State       City                   AllTogether
0     USA      Nevada  Las Vegas      USA - Nevada - Las Vegas
1  Brazil  Pernambuco     Recife  Brazil - Pernambuco - Recife

Do note that if your pandas dataframe/series has null values, you need to include the parameter na_rep to replace the NaN values with a string, otherwise the combined column will default to NaN.

Use of a lamba function this time with string.format().

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'Quarter': ['q1', 'q2']})
print df
df['YearQuarter'] = df[['Year','Quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
print df

  Quarter  Year
0      q1  2014
1      q2  2015
  Quarter  Year YearQuarter
0      q1  2014      2014q1
1      q2  2015      2015q2

This allows you to work with non-strings and reformat values as needed.

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'Year': ['2014', '2015'], 'Quarter': [1, 2]})
print df.dtypes
print df

df['YearQuarter'] = df[['Year','Quarter']].apply(lambda x : '{}q{}'.format(x[0],x[1]), axis=1)
print df

Quarter     int64
Year       object
dtype: object
   Quarter  Year
0        1  2014
1        2  2015
   Quarter  Year YearQuarter
0        1  2014      2014q1
1        2  2015      2015q2