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I have multiple lists on python:

a = ["house","garden", "living room", "dog","cat"]

b= ["cat","dog", "chicken"]

c=["house", "garden","bathroom"]

I'd like to create the following dataframe:

a b c
house 0 1
garden 0 1
living room 0 0
dog 1 0
cat 1 0

Thanks for the help!

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  • $\begingroup$ Hi @Marco if you do find the answer below okay (it does work), could you very kindly mark the post as 'accepted'. There's a little grey 'tick' sign to the left of the answer, click that and it goes green. I noted on your past questions you forgotten to do that. Its a small thing but helps everyone, which includes you (you will get +2). $\endgroup$
    – M__
    Sep 13, 2022 at 13:31

3 Answers 3

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Here you go, just add column 'C' and you are sorted. Just to note, you must be seeking a pandas solution because merge is a pandas command and you're asking for a Python solution.

import pandas as pd

a = ["house","garden", "living room", "dog","cat"]
b= ["cat","dog", "chicken"]
df = pd.DataFrame(a, columns = ['a'])
df2 = pd.DataFrame(b, columns = ['b'])
dfa = df['a'].value_counts()
dfa.columns = ['a']
dfb = df2['b'].value_counts()
dfb.columns = ['b']
dfa = dfa.to_frame()
dfb = dfb.to_frame()
df3 = dfa.join(dfb).replace(np.nan, 0).astype(int)
print (df3)

Output

             a  b
house        1  0
garden       1  0
living room  1  0
dog          1  1
cat          1  1

and if you want to remove the 'a' column

print (df3.drop('a', axis=1))

             b
house        0
garden       0
living room  0
dog          1
cat          1

Notes The key command here is value_counts and makes a frequency plot. Its output is a Series rather than a DataFrame so it needs converting.

If you want to keep all inputs the commands is

df3 = pd.concat([dfa, dfb]).replace(np.nan, 0).astype(int)

Alternatively,

a = ["house","garden", "living room", "dog","cat"]
b= ["cat","dog", "chicken"]
df = pd.DataFrame(a).value_counts().to_frame('a')
df2 = pd.DataFrame(b).value_counts().to_frame('b')
df3 = df.join(df2).replace(np.nan, 0).astype(int).rename_axis(None)
print (df3.drop('a', axis=1))
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I'm aware that this asks specifically for a python solution, but I'd like to add an R answer as well, just in case someone using R has a similar problem:

> a <- c("house","garden", "living room", "dog","cat")
> b <- c("cat","dog", "chicken")
> c <- c("house", "garden","bathroom")

> (result <- data.frame(row.names=a, a=a %in% a, b=a %in% b, c=a %in% c))
               a     b     c
house       TRUE FALSE  TRUE
garden      TRUE FALSE  TRUE
living room TRUE FALSE FALSE
dog         TRUE  TRUE FALSE
cat         TRUE  TRUE FALSE

or for strictly what you asked for, the TRUE/FALSE values can be encouraged into numbers by adding zero:

> (result <- data.frame(a=a, b=(a %in% b) + 0, c=(a %in% c) + 0))
            a b c
1       house 0 1
2      garden 0 1
3 living room 0 0
4         dog 1 0
5         cat 1 0
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Both existing answers seem to work to my eye. An alternative approach:

import pandas as pd

a = ["house","garden", "living room", "dog","cat"]
b = ["cat","dog", "chicken"]
c = ["house", "garden","bathroom", "unique"]

First we generate all options available. This way your 'a' list is not restricting the options. We use sets to get unique values.

options = list(set(a + b + c))
wanted = pd.DataFrame({'options' : options} )

Next we loop over all the lists. We use tuples to assign both name and variable.

for name, _ in [('a',a),('b',b),('c',c)]:
    wanted.loc[wanted['options'].isin(_), name ] = 1

Finally we fill the missing values with zeroes.

wanted = wanted.fillna('0')

In case you have large number of lists, you can iterate over ascii_lowercase letters:

my_tuples = ()
from string import ascii_lowercase

for _ in ascii_lowercase[:3]: #<-magic number for number of lists here
     my_tuples = my_tuples + (str(_), eval(_))

Then change for loop as:

for name, _ in my_tuples:
     ....
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