title: comparing a string with a panda dataframe
body: <p>This is how my dataframe looks like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>df2.head()
               brand  brand_len
  3   [delta]         1        
  5   [whirlpool]     1        
  11  [toro]          1        
  15  [insinkerator]  1        
  16  [sunjoy]        1     
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I want to compare a string <code>Q=['delta','pandas']</code> with my df2, I don't get any match. This is how I am doing it:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#check for exact similarity
  Q = ['delta','pandas']
  for q in Q:
      print q
      for brand in df2.brand:
          print brand
          if q==brand:
              print brand
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is the output:</p>
  
  <pre><code>             brand  brand_len
  3   [delta]         1        
  5   [whirlpool]     1        
  11  [toro]          1        
  15  [insinkerator]  1        
  16  [sunjoy]        1        
  delta
  [u'delta']
  [u'whirlpool']
  [u'toro']
  [u'insinkerator']
  [u'sunjoy']
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can I get rid of the u presented in my brand variable.</p>