Using Wildcard to extract values with Field Calculator?

Question

I'm trying to extract a portion of an existing field in an attribute table to a new field using Field Calculator and have been running into some difficulties. It seems like there must be a way to do this, although with my limited VBS and Python experience I can't be certain. I'm working with 10.0 (sp. 2) The exact problem is this: The layer I'm working with has a very long field, [PopUp] (which was created when converting a KMZ file to a feature class) whose contents for each feature look something like this: ...LAND USE CODE 954... I want to extract just the Land Use Code from the [PopUp] field and populate a new field with it (either a numeric field or string, I don't care). The Land Use Code changes based on the feature in question and the length of the string varies for each feature both before and after this segment which I want to extract (so I can't use a function which just grabs X number of characters from the left or right side). Is this possible using the Field Calculator, with either Python or VBScript? If so, I assume it would require some way to indicate a wildcard on either side of the Land Use Code, but I know it doesn't work the same as a simple SQL query/search. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

DanEckberg · Answer

Thanks, that worked and helped lead me to my ultimate solution, which was as follows (and conducted from the stand-alone Python Window, not Field Calculator):import re fc='file path' rows=arcpy.UpdateCursor(fc) for row in rows: row.FieldName = re.search('LAND USE CODE (\d*)<' , row.PopUp).group(1) rows.updateRow(row)

Anonymous User · Answer

Are you familiar with cursors?  This can be done very easily with an update cursor:
fc = r'path	o\your\featureClass'
rows = arcpy.UpdateCursor(fc)
for row in rows:
    row.Land_Use = int(''.join([i for i in row.PopUp if i.isdigit()]))
    rows.updateRow(row)

Where 'Land_Use' is the new field you want to extract the values to (I had it set up as a short integer field, hence the int() value).  The fc variable is just the path pointing to your feature class.  This just runs a simple test to extract all values within the text string that are integers.