How to remove blanks/NA's from dataframe and shift the values up

You can use apply with dropna:

np.random.seed(100)
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(5,4))
df.iloc[1,2] = np.NaN
df.iloc[0,1] = np.NaN
df.iloc[2,1] = np.NaN
df.iloc[2,0] = np.NaN
print (df)
          0         1         2         3
0 -1.749765       NaN  1.153036 -0.252436
1  0.981321  0.514219       NaN -1.070043
2       NaN       NaN -0.458027  0.435163
3 -0.583595  0.816847  0.672721 -0.104411
4 -0.531280  1.029733 -0.438136 -1.118318

df1 = df.apply(lambda x: pd.Series(x.dropna().values))
print (df1)
          0         1         2         3
0 -1.749765  0.514219  1.153036 -0.252436
1  0.981321  0.816847 -0.458027 -1.070043
2 -0.583595  1.029733  0.672721  0.435163
3 -0.531280       NaN -0.438136 -0.104411
4       NaN       NaN       NaN -1.118318

And then if need replace to empty space, what create mixed values - strings with numeric - some functions can be broken:

df1 = df.apply(lambda x: pd.Series(x.dropna().values)).fillna('')
print (df1)
          0         1         2         3
0  -1.74977  0.514219   1.15304 -0.252436
1  0.981321  0.816847 -0.458027 -1.070043
2 -0.583595   1.02973  0.672721  0.435163
3  -0.53128           -0.438136 -0.104411
4                               -1.118318

A numpy approach
The idea is to sort the columns by np.isnan so that np.nans are put last. I use kind='mergesort' to preserve the order within non np.nan. Finally, I slice the array and reassign it. I follow this up with a fillna

v = df.values
i = np.arange(v.shape[1])
a = np.isnan(v).argsort(0, kind='mergesort')
v[:] = v[a, i]
print(df.fillna(''))

          0         1         2         3
0   1.85748 -0.540645 -0.462941 -0.600606
1  0.000267  0.036393 -0.803889  0.492480
2  0.566922 -0.221294  -1.58493  0.527973
3 -0.243182             1.40348  2.278294
4                                1.574097

If you didn't want to alter the dataframe in place

v = df.values
i = np.arange(v.shape[1])
a = np.isnan(v).argsort(0, kind='mergesort')
pd.DataFrame(v[a, i], df.index, df.columns).fillna('')

The point of this is to leverage numpys quickness

naive time test

enter image description here


Adding on to solution by piRSquared: This shifts all the values to the left instead of up.
If not all values are numbers, use pd.isnull

v = df.values
a = [[n]*v.shape[1] for n in range(v.shape[0])]
b = pd.isnull(v).argsort(axis=1, kind = 'mergesort')
# a is a matrix used to reference the row index, 
# b is a matrix used to reference the column index
# taking an entry from a and the respective entry from b (Same index), 
# we have a position that references an entry in v
v[a, b]

A bit of explanation:

a is a list of length v.shape[0], and it looks something like this:

[[0, 0, 0, 0],
 [1, 1, 1, 1],
 [2, 2, 2, 2],
 [3, 3, 3, 3],
 [4, 4, 4, 4],
 ...

what happens here is that, v is m x n, and I have made both a and b m x n, and so what we are doing is, pairing up every entry i,j in a and b to get the element at row with value of element at i,j in a and column with value of element at i,j, in b. So if we have a and b both look like the matrix above, then v[a,b] returns a matrix where the first row contains n copies of v[0][0], second row contains n copies of v[1][1] and so on.

In solution piRSquared, his i is a list not a matrix. So the list is used for v.shape[0] times, aka once for every row. Similarly, we could have done:

a = [[n] for n in range(v.shape[0])]
# which looks like 
# [[0],[1],[2],[3]...]
# since we are trying to indicate the row indices of the matrix v as opposed to 
# [0, 1, 2, 3, ...] which refers to column indices  

Let me know if anything is unclear, Thanks :)