String from index position

[NoahHuntington]

Trying to calculate field using all the leftmost characters of [TEXTSTRING] up to the first occurrence of "out" in [TEXTSTRING] whose position has been calculated and placed in [POSITION] field.  The following is  vbscript but I'm sure there is an easy python solution to this. The script should help clarify...

[position] = first occurrence of "out" in [TEXTSTRING]

label:

Left( [TEXTSTRING], Len( [TEXTSTRING] ) [position] )

I hope this make sense?

[NoahHuntington]

Are you trying to calculate a field or create a label?

Ultimately label.  In doing so was attempting to create new label field? Open to label expression too!

[MathewCoyle]

If neither of the posted samples worked for you something odd is going on with your data or how you are executing the calculator. Are you sure you are enabling Python instead of VB? What errors or messages do you get?

[NoahHuntington]

Matt,

position is a long, new label field and textstring are string fields...

using:
!TEXTSTRING![:int( !position!)]

received:
error 000539: exceptions.TypeError: cannot concatenate 'str' and 'int' objects.

[MathewCoyle]

Is that your entire expression? Can you take a screenshot of your field calculator window with the code you execute that returns that error? Also can you post the entire error message? And what version of ArcGIS are you using? Something isn't adding up here.

[NoahHuntington]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]31928[/ATTACH]

This is what I'm attempting?

[MathewCoyle]

Can you post the full error you are receiving so we can see what has been passed that causes the error? It should look something like this.

Executing: CalculateField blocks TEST_LABEL "!SOURCEID![:  !TEXT_INTS! ]" PYTHON_9.3 #
Start Time: Tue Mar 04 12:48:53 2014
ERROR 000539: Error running expression: u"FA07908426251"[:  u"2014" ] 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<expression>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: slice indices must be integers or None or have an __index__ method

Failed to execute (CalculateField).
Failed at Tue Mar 04 12:48:53 2014 (Elapsed Time: 0.04 seconds)

You can find it under the 'Results' tab

[NoahHuntington]

Can you post the full error you are receiving so we can see what has been passed that causes the error? It should look something like this.

Executing: CalculateField blocks TEST_LABEL "!SOURCEID![:  !TEXT_INTS! ]" PYTHON_9.3 #
Start Time: Tue Mar 04 12:48:53 2014
ERROR 000539: Error running expression: u"FA07908426251"[:  u"2014" ] 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<expression>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: slice indices must be integers or None or have an __index__ method

Failed to execute (CalculateField).
Failed at Tue Mar 04 12:48:53 2014 (Elapsed Time: 0.04 seconds)

You can find it under the 'Results' tab

Messages
Executing: CalculateField OWNERSHIP_TEXT Label "!TEXTSTRING![:int (!postion!)]" PYTHON_9.3 #
Start Time: Tue Mar 04 16:55:32 2014
ERROR 000539: SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal (<expression>, line 1)
Failed to execute (CalculateField).
Failed at Tue Mar 04 16:55:32 2014 (Elapsed Time: 0.10 seconds)

[MathewCoyle]

ERROR 000539: SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal (<expression>, line 1)

That is an error with the expression format itself. Double check your field names and that you are using Python instead of VB.

[NoahHuntington]

That is an error with the expression format itself. Double check your field names and that you are using Python instead of VB.

If I ran yesterday according to the picture provided at 11:18 where do you suppose I went wrong? FYI: [postion] although misspelled is the actual field name...