Pandas split dataframe column for every character

You can call apply and for each row call pd.Series on the the list of the values:

In [16]:

df['Day1'].apply(lambda x: pd.Series(list(x)))
Out[16]:
  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  ... 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47
0  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D
1  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D
2  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D
3  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D
4  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D

[5 rows x 48 columns]

It looks like you have trailing spaces, remove these using str.rstrip:

df['Day1'] = df['Day1'].str.rstrip()

then do the above.

use Series.str.extractall() method:

In [19]: df.Day1.str.extractall('(.)', flags=re.U)[0].unstack().rename_axis(None, 1)
Out[19]:
  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  ... 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47
0  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D
1  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D
2  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D
3  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D
4  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D ...  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D  D

[5 rows x 48 columns]