ArcInfo Item properties

Summary

The Describe function returns the following properties for ArcInfo Items. ArcInfo Item are accessed from the itemSet property of ArcInfo Table Properties.

An ArcInfo Item returns a dataType of "ArcInfoItem".

Properties

Property	Explanation	Data Type
alternateName (Read Only)	The alternate name is another name you can use to refer to the item. It sometimes contains abbreviated names for items that otherwise have long descriptive names. Long item names often help for documentation purposes. Shorter names may be convenient for ad hoc usage.	String
isIndexed (Read Only)	True if the item is indexed. Indexed items speed up selection operations on large INFO files.	Boolean
isPseudo (Read Only)	True if the item is a pseudo item.	Boolean
isRedefined (Read Only)	True if it is a redefined item. Redefined items can be subsets of regular items or can span multiple regular items.	Boolean
itemType (Read Only)	The data type of the item. One of: Binary, Character, Date, Floating, Integer, Number, OID.	String
numberDecimals (Read Only)	The number of digits to the right of the decimal place. This is only for item types which hold decimal numbers.	Integer
outputWidth (Read Only)	The number of spaces used to display the item's values.	Integer
startPosition (Read Only)	The starting position of a redefined item.	Integer
width (Read Only)	The number of spaces (or bytes) used to store the item's values.	Integer

Code Sample

ArcInfo Item properties example (stand-alone script)

The following stand-alone script displays properties from all the ArcInfo Items in an ArcInfo Table.

import arcpy

# Create a list of Describe objects from the ArcInfo Table.
#
descList = arcpy.Describe("C:/data/crimefreq").itemSet

# Print properties about each item in the itemSet
#
for item in descList:
    print item.name
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Alternate name:", item.alternateName)
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Is indexed:", item.isIndexed)
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Is pseudo:", item.isPseudo)
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Is redefined:", item.isRedefined)
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Item type:", item.itemType)
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Number of decimals:", item.numberDecimals)
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Output width:", item.outputWidth)
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Start position:", item.startPosition)
    print "%-22s %s" % ("  Width:", item.width)