pandas string contains lookup: NaN leads to Value Error -

if filter rows string in column value, possible use data.sample_id.str.contains('hph') (answered before: check if string in pandas dataframe column in list, or check if string in pandas dataframe).

however, lookup column contains emtpy cells. terefore, str.contains() yields nan values , value error upon indexing.

`valueerror: cannot index vector containing na / nan values`` 

what works:

# runs  mask = [index index, item in enumerate(data.sample_id.values) if 'zent' in str(item)] 

is there more elegant , faster method (similar str.contains()) 1 ?

you can set parameter na in str.contains false:

print (df.a.str.contains('hph', na=false)) 

using edchum sample:

df = pd.dataframe({'a':['hph', np.nan, 'sadhphsad', 'hello']}) print (df)            0        hph 1        nan 2  sadhphsad 3      hello  print (df.a.str.contains('hph', na=false)) 0     true 1    false 2     true 3    false name: a, dtype: bool