I have the following DataFrame with named columns and index:
'a' 'a*' 'b' 'b*'
1 5 NaN 9 NaN
2 NaN 3 3 NaN
3 4 NaN 1 NaN
4 NaN 9 NaN 7
The data source has caused some column headings to be copied slightly differently. For example, as above, some column headings are a string and some are the same string with an additional '*' character.
I want to copy any values (which are not null) from a*
and b*
columns to a
and b
, respectively.
Is there an efficient way to do such an operation?