Home Convert variable to multiple columns with Pandas
 I have a legacy datafile that contains data in the following format: SURVEY NUM TEMPORAL WHS 1 Byz WHS 1 Byz_Um WHS 1 IAII WHS 1 L_Isl WHS 1 L_Rom WHS 1 Mod WHS 1 Nab WHS 2 Byz WHS 2 Mod WHS 2 Unk WHS 2 MP WHS 3 Byz WHS 3 Nab WHS 3 LMP WHS 3 UP WHS 4 LMP WHS 4 MP WHS 4 UP WHS 5 Byz WHS 5 Unk WHS 5 LMP  etc.. Essentially, the column "NUM" is a unique identifier that relates to a specific site, and the column "TEMPORAL" is a value associated with that site. For whatever reason, the original file repeates this over several lines for sites with mutltiple temporal occupations (this archaeological data). I would like to use Pandas to conver this to something like so: SURVEY NUM Byz Byz_Um IAII L_Isl LMP L_Rom Nab MP Mod Unk UP WHS 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 WHS 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 WHS 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 WHS 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 WHS 5 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0  Where a 1 is placed into a new column if that TEMPORAL period exists. I tried using df.pivot with "NUM" as the index and "TEMPORAL" as the columns, but that did not work. There are several thousand sites in this database, so doing it manually is not a possibility. Any ideas?