Repeat rows in a pandas DataFrame based on column value

Question

I have the following df:

code . role    . persons
123 .  Janitor . 3
123 .  Analyst . 2
321 .  Vallet  . 2
321 .  Auditor . 5

The first line means that I have 3 persons with the role Janitors. My problem is that I would need to have one line for each person. My df should look like this:

df:

code . role    . persons
123 .  Janitor . 3
123 .  Janitor . 3
123 .  Janitor . 3
123 .  Analyst . 2
123 .  Analyst . 2
321 .  Vallet  . 2
321 .  Vallet  . 2
321 .  Auditor . 5
321 .  Auditor . 5
321 .  Auditor . 5
321 .  Auditor . 5
321 .  Auditor . 5

How could I do that using pandas?

Answer 1

reindex+ repeat

df.reindex(df.index.repeat(df.persons))
Out[951]: 
   code  .     role ..1  persons
0   123  .  Janitor   .        3
0   123  .  Janitor   .        3
0   123  .  Janitor   .        3
1   123  .  Analyst   .        2
1   123  .  Analyst   .        2
2   321  .   Vallet   .        2
2   321  .   Vallet   .        2
3   321  .  Auditor   .        5
3   321  .  Auditor   .        5
3   321  .  Auditor   .        5
3   321  .  Auditor   .        5
3   321  .  Auditor   .        5

PS: you can add.reset_index(drop=True) to get the new index