Value Replace with Python and Pandas

Question

Hello, I’m trying to remove a character from a base that I extracted from a TXT file, I loaded the file with pandas but I can’t remove it using replace command, below the values I have in a certain column.

0 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
1 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
2 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
3 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
4 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00

I am using the following code to remove "[" with the following command:

y[3]replace("[","")
0 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
1 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
2 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
3 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
4 [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
Name: 3, dtype: object

by what I understand it is not removing the character because the field type is as object, I need to do this for other columns of my file however I am bumping in this conversion, already tried the command below to change the column to string however unsuccessfully:

y[3] = y[3].astype(str)
y[3]
Name: 3, dtype: object

Answer 1

Having the dataframe below:

>>> df
                     txt
0  [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
1  [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
2  [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
3  [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00

Just do

df['txt'] = df['txt'].str.replace('\[', '')

print(df)
0    23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
1    23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
2    23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
3    23/Mar/2021:00:00:00
Name: txt, dtype: object

I believe you want to turn the field into datetime as well, so do

df['data'] = pd.to_datetime(df['txt'], format='%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S')

print(df)

                    txt       data
0  23/Mar/2021:00:00:00 2021-03-23
1  23/Mar/2021:00:00:00 2021-03-23
2  23/Mar/2021:00:00:00 2021-03-23
3  23/Mar/2021:00:00:00 2021-03-23

If you only need the dates, you can do it at once

df['data'] = pd.to_datetime(df['txt'], format='[%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S')

print(df)
                     txt       data
0  [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00 2021-03-23
1  [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00 2021-03-23
2  [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00 2021-03-23
3  [23/Mar/2021:00:00:00 2021-03-23

then throw the column txt out of:

df.drop("txt", axis=1, inplace=True)

Answer 2

Use it like this:

text = pd.read_csv('dados.txt', header=None)
text = text.replace('\[', '', regex=True)