Python | Pandas Series.str.rindex()

Python is a great language for doing data analysis, primarily because of the fantastic ecosystem of data-centric Python packages. Pandas is one of those packages and makes importing and analyzing data much easier.
Pandas str.rindex() method is used to search and return highest index(First from right side) of a substring in particular section (Between start and end) of every string in a series. This method works in a similar way to str.find() but on not found case, instead of returning -1, str.rindex() gives a ValueError.
Note: This method is different from str.index(). str.rindex() is for reverse searching. Output of both str.index() and str.rindex() is same if the substring exists only once in string.

Syntax: Series.str.rindex(sub, start=0, end=None)
Parameters: 
sub: String or character to be searched in the text value in series 
start: String or character to be searched in the text value in series 
end: String or character to be searched in the text value in series
Return type: Series with highest index of substring if found. 

To download the data set used in following example, click here.
In the following examples, the data frame used contains data of some NBA players. The image of data frame before any operations is attached below. 

Example #1: Finding highest index when substring exists in every string
In this example, ‘e’ is passed as substring. Since ‘e’ exists in all 5 strings, highest index of it’s occurrence is returned. Both index and rindex methods are applied and output is stored in different columns to compare them. Before applying any operations, null rows were removed using .dropna() method. 

Python3

# importing pandas module
import pandas as pd

# reading csv file from url
data = pd.read_csv("https://media.geeksforgeeks.org/wp-content/uploads/nba.csv")

# dropping null value columns to avoid errors
data.dropna(inplace = True)

# extracting 5 rows
short_data = data.head().copy()

# calling str.index() method
short_data["Index Name"]= short_data["Name"].str.index("e")

# calling str.rindex() method
short_data["Reverse Index Name"]= short_data["Name"].str.rindex("e")

# display
short_data

Output:
As shown in the output image, It can be compared that .index() method returned the least index while the str.rindex() method returned highest index. 

Example #2: 
In this example, ‘a’ is searched in top 5 rows. Since ‘a’ doesn’t exist in every string, value error will be returned. To handle error, try and except is used.

Python3

# importing pandas module
import pandas as pd

# reading csv file from url
data = pd.read_csv("https://media.geeksforgeeks.org/wp-content/uploads/nba.csv")

# dropping null value columns to avoid errors
data.dropna(inplace = True)

# extracting 5 rows
short_data = data.head().copy()

# calling str.rindex() method
try:
    short_data["Index Name"]= short_data["Name"].str.rindex("a")
except Exception as err:
    print(err)


# display
short_data

Output:
As shown in output image, the output data frame is not having the Index Name column and the error “substring not found” was printed. That is because str.rindex() returns ValueError on not found and hence it must have gone to except case and printed the error.