How to select NaN values in pandas in specific range - pandas

Question

I have a dataframe like this:
df = pd.DataFrame({'col1': [5,6,np.nan, np.nan,np.nan, 4, np.nan, np.nan,np.nan, np.nan,7,8,8, np.nan, 5 , np.nan]})
df:
col1
0 5.0
1 6.0
2 NaN
3 NaN
4 NaN
5 4.0
6 NaN
7 NaN
8 NaN
9 NaN
10 7.0
11 8.0
12 8.0
13 NaN
14 5.0
15 NaN
These NaN values should be replaced in the following way. The first selection should look like this.
2 NaN
3 NaN
4 NaN
5 4.0
6 NaN
7 NaN
8 NaN
9 NaN
And then these Nan values should be replace with the only value in that selection, 4.
The second selection is:
13 NaN
14 5.0
15 NaN
and these NaN values should be replaced with 5.
With isnull() you can select the NaN values in a dataframe but how are able to filter/select these specific ranges in pandas?

Answer 1

Solution if missing values are around one non missing val - solution create unique groups and replace in groups by forward and back filling:
#test missing values
s = df['col1'].isna()
#create unique groups
v = s.ne(s.shift()).cumsum()
#count groups and get only 1 value around, filter only misising values groups
mask = v.map(v.value_counts()).eq(1) | s
#groups for replacement per groups
g = mask.ne(mask.shift()).cumsum()
df['col2'] = df.groupby(g)['col1'].apply(lambda x: x.ffill().bfill())
print (df)
col1 col2
0 5.0 5.0
1 6.0 6.0
2 NaN 4.0
3 NaN 4.0
4 NaN 4.0
5 4.0 4.0
6 NaN 4.0
7 NaN 4.0
8 NaN 4.0
9 NaN 4.0
10 7.0 7.0
11 8.0 8.0
12 8.0 8.0
13 NaN 5.0
14 5.0 5.0
15 NaN 5.0