is it possible to do fuzzy match merge with python pandas?
pandas, python
Solution
Similar to @locojay suggestion, you can apply `difflib`'s `get_close_matches` to `df2`'s index and then apply a `join`:
In [23]: import difflib
In [24]: difflib.get_close_matches
Out[24]: <function difflib.get_close_matches>
In [25]: df2.index = df2.index.map(lambda x: difflib.get_close_matches(x, df1.index)[0])
In [26]: df2
Out[26]:
letter
one a
two b
three c
four d
five e
In [31]: df1.join(df2)
Out[31]:
number letter
one 1 a
two 2 b
three 3 c
four 4 d
five 5 e
.
If these were columns, in the same vein you could apply to the column then `merge`:
df1 = DataFrame([[1,'one'],[2,'two'],[3,'three'],[4,'four'],[5,'five']], columns=['number', 'name'])
df2 = DataFrame([['a','one'],['b','too'],['c','three'],['d','fours'],['e','five']], columns=['letter', 'name'])
df2['name'] = df2['name'].apply(lambda x: difflib.get_close_matches(x, df1['name'])[0])
df1.merge(df2)
Problem
I have two DataFrames which I want to merge based on a column. However, due to alternate spellings, different number of spaces, absence/presence of diacritical marks, I would like to be able to merge as long as they are similar to one another. Any similarity algorithm will do (soundex, Levenshtein, difflib's). Say one DataFrame has the following data: ``` df1 = DataFrame([[1],[2],[3],[4],[5]], index=['one','two','three','four','five'], columns=['number']) number one 1 two 2 three 3 four 4 five 5 df2 = DataFrame([['a'],['b'],['c'],['d'],['e']], index=['one','too','three','fours','five'], columns=['letter']) letter one a too b three c fours d five e ``` Then I want to get the resulting DataFrame ``` number letter one 1 a two 2 b three 3 c four 4 d five 5 e ```