topic Re: Remove shapefiles from a list in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

Remove shapefiles from a list

AhmadSALEH1 — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 22:01:32 GMT

Hello,

I am trying to write the following python script which removes all shapefiles (any word that ends with .shp) from a list

#Assign variables to the shapefiles
park="Parks_sd.shp"
sewer="Sewer_Main_sd.shp"
water="water"
street="street"

#Create a list of shapefile variables
datalist=[park,sewer,water,street]

# prints the list before the loop to compare the results

print datalist

for x in datalist:
if x.endswith(".shp"):
datalist.remove(x)

print datalist

But the result looks like this

['Parks_sd.shp', 'Sewer_Main_sd.shp', 'water', 'street']
['Sewer_Main_sd.shp', 'water', 'street']

the code succeeds to remove the first item in the list but fails to remove the second one!

What might be the issue here?

Re: Remove shapefiles from a list

JonathanQuinn — Sat, 11 Dec 2021 06:19:02 GMT

You shouldn't be iterating through a list while modifying it. See the following posts:

Python: Removing list element while iterating over list - Stack Overflow

Delete item from list in Python while iterating over it - Stack Overflow

python - Remove items from a list while iterating - Stack Overflow

You can do this instead:

#Assign variables to the shapefiles
sewer="Parks_sd.shp"
park="Sewer_Main.shp"
water="water"
street="street"

#Create a list of shapefile variables
datalist=[park,sewer,water,street]

for x in list(datalist):
    if x.endswith(".shp"):
        datalist.remove(x)

print(datalist)‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Re: Remove shapefiles from a list

AhmadSALEH1 — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 12:32:00 GMT

Thanks Jonathan, it worked now, this is helpful. By the way why I cannot see " Mark as correct answer" icon next to your answer!