Pandas groupby: How to get a union of strings

You can use the apply method to apply an arbitrary function to the grouped data. So if you want a set, apply set. If you want a list, apply list.

>>> d
   A       B
0  1    This
1  2      is
2  3       a
3  4  random
4  1  string
5  2       !
>>> d.groupby('A')['B'].apply(list)
A
1    [This, string]
2           [is, !]
3               [a]
4          [random]
dtype: object

If you want something else, just write a function that does what you want and then apply that.

In [4]: df = read_csv(StringIO(data),sep='\s+')

In [5]: df
Out[5]: 
   A         B       C
0  1  0.749065    This
1  2  0.301084      is
2  3  0.463468       a
3  4  0.643961  random
4  1  0.866521  string
5  2  0.120737       !

In [6]: df.dtypes
Out[6]: 
A      int64
B    float64
C     object
dtype: object

When you apply your own function, there is not automatic exclusions of non-numeric columns. This is slower, though, than the application of .sum() to the groupby

In [8]: df.groupby('A').apply(lambda x: x.sum())
Out[8]: 
   A         B           C
A                         
1  2  1.615586  Thisstring
2  4  0.421821         is!
3  3  0.463468           a
4  4  0.643961      random

sum by default concatenates

In [9]: df.groupby('A')['C'].apply(lambda x: x.sum())
Out[9]: 
A
1    Thisstring
2           is!
3             a
4        random
dtype: object

You can do pretty much what you want

In [11]: df.groupby('A')['C'].apply(lambda x: "{%s}" % ', '.join(x))
Out[11]: 
A
1    {This, string}
2           {is, !}
3               {a}
4          {random}
dtype: object

Doing this on a whole frame, one group at a time. Key is to return a Series

def f(x):
     return Series(dict(A = x['A'].sum(), 
                        B = x['B'].sum(), 
                        C = "{%s}" % ', '.join(x['C'])))

In [14]: df.groupby('A').apply(f)
Out[14]: 
   A         B               C
A                             
1  2  1.615586  {This, string}
2  4  0.421821         {is, !}
3  3  0.463468             {a}
4  4  0.643961        {random}