Number duplicates sequentially in Pandas DataFrame

Question

I have a Pandas DataFrame that has a column that is basically a foreign key, as below:

Index   |  f_key  |    values
  0     |    1    |     red 
  1     |    2    |     blue 
  2     |    1    |     green 
  3     |    2    |     yellow 
  4     |    3    |     orange 
  5     |    1    |     violet

What I would like is to add a column that labels the repeated foreign keys sequentially, as in "dup_number" below:

Index   | dup_number |  f_key  |    values
  0     |     1      |    1    |     red 
  1     |     1      |    2    |     blue 
  2     |     2      |    1    |     green 
  3     |     2      |    2    |     yellow 
  4     |     1      |    3    |     orange 
  5     |     3      |    1    |     violet

The rows can be reordered if needed, I just need to get the "dup_number" keys in there. I wrote following code, which works fine, it gives me a Series which I can then add into the DataFrame, but it is very slow (that for loop is what kills the time), and I feel like it's way more complicated than is needed:

df = pd.DataFrame({'f_key': [1,2,1,2,3,1], 'values': ['red', 'blue', 'green', 'yellow', 'orange', 'violet']})
df_unique = df['f_key'].drop_duplicates().reset_index(drop=True)
dup_number = pd.DataFrame(columns = ['dup_number', 'temp_index'])
for n in np.arange(len(df_unique)):
    sub_df = df.loc[df['f_key'] == df_unique[n]].reset_index()
    dup_index = pd.DataFrame({'dup_number': sub_df.index.values[:]+1, 'temp_index': sub_df['index']})
    dup_number = dup_number.append(dup_index)
dup_number = dup_number.set_index(dup_number['temp_index'].astype(int))
dup_number = dup_number['dup_number'].sort_index()

Any suggestions on faster/simpler ways to do this are appreciated!

score 12 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 14 '16 at 02:51

You can use cumcount()

df['dup_number'] = df.groupby(['f_key']).cumcount()+1

           f_key  values  dup_number
    0      1     red           1
    1      2    blue           1
    2      1   green           2
    3      2  yellow           2
    4      3  orange           1
    5      1  violet           3

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:25

Below is a similar solution as one listed in this question. Here is a modified version of one of the answers that would apply here:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame({'index':[0,1,2,3,4,5],'f_key':[1,2,1,2,3,1]
              ,'values':['red','blue','green','yellow','orange','violet']})

df['duplicate_num']=df.sort_values('index') \
    .groupby('f_key') \
    .cumcount() + 1

In essence, we're applying a window function (conceptually) to the dataframe and generating a row number for each instance (ordered by the index) of a repeating foreign key value.

Number duplicates sequentially in Pandas DataFrame

2 Answers2