You can use numpy.where:
def my_fun (var1,var2,var3):
df[var3]= np.where((df[var1]-df[var2])>0, df[var1]-df[var2], 0)
return df
df1 = my_fun('age1','age2','diff')
print (df1)
age1 age2 diff
0 23 10 13
1 45 20 25
2 21 50 0
Error is better explain here.
Slowier solution with apply, where need axis=1 for data processing by rows:
def my_fun(x, var1, var2, var3):
print (x)
if (x[var1]-x[var2])>0 :
x[var3]=x[var1]-x[var2]
else:
x[var3]=0
return x
print (df.apply(lambda x: my_fun(x, 'age1', 'age2','diff'), axis=1))
age1 age2 diff
0 23 10 13
1 45 20 25
2 21 50 0
Also is possible use loc, but sometimes data can be overwritten:
def my_fun(x, var1, var2, var3):
print (x)
mask = (x[var1]-x[var2])>0
x.loc[mask, var3] = x[var1]-x[var2]
x.loc[~mask, var3] = 0
return x
print (my_fun(df, 'age1', 'age2','diff'))
age1 age2 diff
0 23 10 13.0
1 45 20 25.0
2 21 50 0.0