How do I prevent str.contains() from searching for a sub-string? - pandas

Question

I want Pandas to search my data frame for the complete string and not a sub-string. Here is a minimal-working example to explain my problem -
data = [['tom', 'wells fargo', 'retired'], ['nick', 'bank of america', 'partner'], ['juli', 'chase', 'director - oil well']]
# Create the pandas DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data, columns=['Name', 'Place', 'Position'])
# print dataframe.
df
val = 'well'
df.loc[df.apply(lambda col: col.str.contains(val, case=False)).any(axis="columns")]
The correct code would have only returned the second row and not the first one
Name Place Position
0 tom wells fargo retired
2 juli chase director - oil well
Update - My intention is to have a search that looks for the exact string requested. While looking for "well" the algorithm shouldn't extract out "well. Based on the comments, I understand how my question might be misleading.

Answer 1

IIUC, you can use:
>>> df[~df['Position'].str.contains(fr'\b{val}\b')]
Name Place Position
0 tom wells fargo retired
2 juli chase director - oil well
And for all columns:
>>> df[~df.apply(lambda x: x.str.contains(fr'\b{val}\b', case=False)).any(axis=1)]
Name Place Position
0 tom wells fargo retired
2 juli chase director - oil well

Answer 2

The regular expression anchor \b which is a word boundary is what you want.
I added addtional data to your code to illustrate more:
import pandas as pd
data = [
['tom', 'wells fargo', 'retired']
, ['nick', 'bank of america', 'partner']
, ['john','bank of welly','blah']
, ['jan','bank of somewell knwon','well that\'s it']
, ['juli', 'chase', 'director - oil well']
]
# Create the pandas DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data, columns=['Name', 'Place', 'Position'])
# print dataframe.
df
val = 'well'
df.loc[df.apply(lambda col: col.str.contains(fr"\b{val}\b", case=False)).any(axis="columns")]
EDIT
In Python3 the string can be substitute with the variable with f in front of " or ' and r will express it as regular expression. Then now you can get the val as you want. Thank #smci
and the output is like this
Name
Place
Position
3
jan
bank of somewell knwon
well that's it
4
juli
chase
director - oil well