Pandas dataframe deduplicate rows with column logic - python-3.x

Question

I have a pandas dataframe with about 100 million rows. I am interested in deduplicating it but have some criteria that I haven't been able to find documentation for.
I would like to deduplicate the dataframe, ignoring one column that will differ. If that row is a duplicate, except for that column, I would like to only keep the row that has a specific string, say X.
Sample dataframe:
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame(columns = ["A","B","C"],
data = [[1,2,"00X"],
[1,3,"010"],
[1,2,"002"]])
Desired output:
>>> df_dedup
A B C
0 1 2 00X
1 1 3 010
So, alternatively stated, the row index 2 would be removed because row index 0 has the information in columns A and B, and X in column C
As this data is slightly large, I hope to avoid iterating over rows, if possible. Ignore Index is the closest thing I've found to the built-in drop_duplicates().
If there is no X in column C then the row should require that C is identical to be deduplicated.
In the case in which there are matching A and B in a row, but have multiple versions of having an X in C, the following would be expected.
df = pd.DataFrame(columns=["A","B","C"],
data = [[1,2,"0X0"],
[1,2,"X00"],
[1,2,"0X0"]])
Output should be:
>>> df_dedup
A B C
0 1 2 0X0
1 1 2 X00

Answer 1

Use DataFrame.duplicated on columns A and B to create a boolean mask m1 corresponding to condition where values in column A and B are not duplicated, then use Series.str.contains + Series.duplicated on column C to create a boolean mask corresponding to condition where C contains string X and C is not duplicated. Finally using these masks filter the rows in df.
m1 = ~df[['A', 'B']].duplicated()
m2 = df['C'].str.contains('X') & ~df['C'].duplicated()
df = df[m1 | m2]
Result:
#1
A B C
0 1 2 00X
1 1 3 010
#2
A B C
0 1 2 0X0
1 1 2 X00

Answer 2

Does the column "C" always have X as the last character of each value? You could try creating a column D with 1 if column C has an X or 0 if it does not. Then just sort the values using sort_values and finally use drop_duplicates with keep='last'
import pandas as pd
df = pd.DataFrame(columns = ["A","B","C"],
data = [[1,2,"00X"],
[1,3,"010"],
[1,2,"002"]])
df['D'] = 0
df.loc[df['C'].str[-1] == 'X', 'D'] = 1
df.sort_values(by=['D'], inplace=True)
df.drop_duplicates(subset=['A', 'B'], keep='last', inplace=True)
This is assuming you also want to drop duplicates in case there is no X in the 'C' column among the duplicates of columns A and B

Answer 3

Here is another approach. I left 'count' (a helper column) in for transparency.
# use df as defined above
# count the A,B pairs
df['count'] = df.groupby(['A', 'B']).transform('count').squeeze()
m1 = (df['count'] == 1)
m2 = (df['count'] > 1) & df['C'].str.contains('X') # could be .endswith('X')
print(df.loc[m1 | m2]) # apply masks m1, m2
A B C count
0 1 2 00X 2
1 1 3 010 1