How to merge columns using mask - pandas

Question

I am trying to merge two columns (Phone 1 and 2)
Here is my fake data:
import pandas as pd
employee = {'EmployeeID' : [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7],
'LastName' : ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h'],
'Name' : ['w', 'x', 'y', 'z', None, None, None, None],
'phone1' : [1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6],
'phone2' : [None, None, 3, 3, None, None, 7, 7],
'level_15' : [0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1]}
df2 = pd.DataFrame(employee)
and I want the 'phone' column to be
'phone' : [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10]
In the beginning of my code, i split the names based on '/' and this code below creates a column with 0s and 1s which I used as mask to do other tasks through out my code.
df2 = (df2.set_index(cols)['name'].str.split('/',expand=True).stack().reset_index(name='Name'))
m = df2['level_15'].eq(0)
print (m)
#remove column level_15
df2 = df2.drop(['level_15'], axis=1)
#add last name for select first letter by condition, replace NaNs by forward fill
df2['last_name'] = df2['name'].str[:2].where(m).ffill()
df2['name'] = df2['name'].mask(m, df2['name'].str[2:])
I feel like there is a way to merge phone1 and phone2 using the 0s and 1s, but I can't figure out. Thank you.

Answer 1

First, start by filling in NaNs;
df2['phone2'] = df2.phone2.fillna(df2.phone1)
# Alternatively, based on your latest update
# df2['phone2'] = df2.phone2.mask(df2.phone2.eq(0)).fillna(df2.phone1)
You can just use np.where to merge columns on odd/even indices:
df2['phone'] = np.where(np.arange(len(df2)) % 2 == 0, df2.phone1, df2.phone2)
df2 = df2.drop(['phone1', 'phone2'], 1)
df2
EmployeeID LastName Name phone
0 0 a w 1
1 1 b x 2
2 2 c y 3
3 3 d z 4
4 4 e None 5
5 5 f None 6
6 6 g None 7
7 7 h None 8
Or, with Series.where/mask:
df2['phone'] = df2.pop('phone1').where(
np.arange(len(df2)) % 2 == 0, df2.pop('phone2')
)
Or,
df2['phone'] = df2.pop('phone1').mask(
np.arange(len(df2)) % 2 != 0, df2.pop('phone2)
)
df2
EmployeeID LastName Name phone
0 0 a w 1
1 1 b x 2
2 2 c y 3
3 3 d z 4
4 4 e None 5
5 5 f None 6
6 6 g None 7
7 7 h None 8