Strip numbers from certain fields

[TonyAlmeida]

I need to strip numbers from certain fields. I have the following but it strips all number from the entire table.

Some of these fields have blanks and nulls.

import arcpy

arcpy.env.overwriteOutput = True

table = "C:/temp/EMS_Table"

field = ['Agency', 'fa', 'lz']
for field in [f.name for f in arcpy.Describe(table).fields if f.type == "String"]:  
    exp = "!{0}!.strip('0123456789.- ')"  
    arcpy.management.CalculateField(table, field, exp.format(field), "PYTHON")‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

[DarrenWiens2]

You are overwriting the list of fields when you create the loop.

Consider:

field = ['Agency', 'fa', 'lz']
for field in [1, 2, 3, 4]:
    print(field)

1
2
3
4‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

If you know the fields you want to loop through:

fields = ['Agency', 'fa', 'lz']
for field in fields:
    print(field)

Agency
fa
lz‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

[DanPatterson_Retired]

field gets defined twice, once in line 7 … which are the fields that you want I presume.... but it gets redefined again in line 8 in the 'for field....' section.  I suspect that it is not just doing the fields you want but all the fields that are of type 'String'

[TonyAlmeida]

yes it's doing all the fields, not really sure how to write it. I am also not sure if this is the best way. would using with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor better?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

I think there is some confusion about whether you are trying to strip stuff from values in a field, or strip the fields (which are weirdly names, hence the suspicion) that you have listed.

If we assume your fields are as listed in line 1 and assuming you are working on a copy and that your calculatefield expression actually works... maybe

field = ['Agency', 'fa', 'lz']
for f in field:
      exp = "!{0}!.strip('0123456789.- ')"
      arcpy.management.CalculateField(table, f, exp.format(field), "PYTHON")‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Now if those aren't the fields, maybe you might want to show with a screen grab what you are working with

[TonyAlmeida]

I am trying to strip from the number values in those fields. sorry for not making it clear.

i am getting ERROR 000539: Invalid field['Agency', 'fa', 'lz']

[DarrenWiens2]

arcpy.management.CalculateField(table, f, exp.format(f), "PYTHON")

[JoeBorgione]

Can you show what the field values look like at present?  Is there a pattern of how they are formatted like

FA25 or FA 25 ?

When you follow some sort of naming convention in your field values it's always easier to parse them out when you need to...

[TonyAlmeida]

I think for the most part they are just FA25 with no spaces.

[JoeBorgione]

I stole this from StackOverflow:  python - Removing numbers from string - Stack Overflow 

no_digits = []
# Iterate through the string, adding non-numbers to the no_digits list
for i in s:
    if not i.isdigit():
        no_digits.append(i)

# Now join all elements of the list with '', 
# which puts all of the characters together.
result = ''.join(no_digits)‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Where s = your field value....

edited- just to add, you could do the inverse, and look for and keep letters....

is_alpha =[]
for i in s:
  if i.isalpha():
    is_alpha.append(i)‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍