Update row values using other row values while iterating over a Pandas dataframe

Question

I have a dataframe A with several columns that is the result of a merge of two dataframes. After the merge, I need to update the values in the answer column in A based on the values in other columns.

Pseudo code:

    for all agreements in A :
       if the length of the value in the year column in A is less than four:
          update string in answer column of A without the value from year column
       else: 
          update string in answer column of A with the value from year column

What I am trying:

for row in A.itertuples() :
  if len(str(A.Year)) < 4 : 
    row.answer = 'Status on ' + row.Name + ' is ' + row.Status 

  else :
    row.answer = 'Status on ' + row.Name + ' ' + str(row.Year) + ' is ' + row.Status 

I get an error AttributeError: can't set attribute

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Since there is no example data, I couldn't tell why the code gives you the error. But you can try using apply()

def generate_answer(row):
  if len(str(row.Year)) < 4 :
    return ('Status on ' + row.Name + ' is ' + row.Status)
  else :
    return ('Status on ' + row.Name + ' ' + str(row.Year) + ' is ' + row.Status)

A['answer'] = A.apply(generate_answer, axis=1)