Exact match resulting in error: 'str' object has no attribute 'str'

Question

I have a dataframe with multiple columns, and one of them is named 'Message'. I am assigning a simple string to it 'test' on index 0

df['Message'][0] = "test"

Now I need to check it in IF statement and if there is a match, I want print the content index 0 of 'Time' column. Following is my code snippet:

if (df['Message'][0]).str.contains('test'):
    print(df['Time'][0])

For some reason I keep getting following error: AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'str'

I have checked that type(df['Message'][0]) is returning as 'str'

Also the complete df shows up as following:

1
df.dtypes
Out[190]:
Date       object
Time       object
Col2       object
Col3       object
Message    object
dtype: object

Appreciate any help on what I am doing wrong here.

_I have checked that type(df['Message'][0]) is returning as 'str'_. Does type 'str' have an attribute 'str'? — Nicholas Hunter, May 04 '21 at 20:03
This addresses a similar issue [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11350770/select-by-partial-string-from-a-pandas-dataframe) — Hemant Rakesh, May 04 '21 at 20:06
In df.dtypes, 'Message' shows up as object. Not sure if thats what you asked @NicholasHunter — Ad_noob, May 04 '21 at 20:31

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 04 '21 at 21:01

1

The str method/object is for a Pandas Series and not for an element of a Series even though that element is a string. By subscripting a series with [0] you are already getting an element of the series. Such string element has no object/property/method called str and hence the error.

To test an element contains a substring, you can use the syntax that @Andrej Kesely suggests:

if 'test' in df['Message'][0]:

answered May 04 '21 at 21:01

SeaBean

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Yes, this works. Thanks for the explanation. My code runs fine now with this change. – Ad_noob May 05 '21 at 07:37

Exact match resulting in error: 'str' object has no attribute 'str'

1 Answers1