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I am trying to identify duplicate records between two feature classes in a file gdb (Arc 10.3). I first create a set of unique IDs present in FC_1, then use an if statement to identify whether the IDs in FC_2 are present in FC_1. 

checkfield = "gisID"
unique_values = set(row[0] for row in arcpy.da.SearchCursor(FC_1, checkfield))

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor (FC_2, [checkfield, "Type"]) as uCurs:
        for uRow in uCurs:
            print (uRow[0])
            if uRow [0] in unique_values:
                uRow [1] = "duplicate"
                uCurs.updateRow(uRow)
            else:
                uRow [1] = "unique"
                uCurs.updateRow(uRow)

    # check if uRow[0] is in the set
    if 200683 in unique_values:
        print ("200683 is in the set")

I've purposefully set up the feature classes such that the 2 records in FC_2 have IDs already present in FC_1. The last 3 lines in the script are there to check this.

However, FC_2 "Type" field only updates with "unique", when these are clearly duplicates. Any advice on how to correct this?

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  • 1
    Have a read of stackoverflow.com/questions/8705378/pythons-in-set-operator, I think a set here mightn't be a good idea. Perhaps make unique_values a list like unique_values = [row[0] for row in arcpy.da.SearchCursor(FC_1, checkfield)]. What is the variable type for gisID? if it's a string then comparison would be best done in upper or lower case.
    – Michael Stimson
    Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 21:32
  • 1
    @MichaelMiles-Stimson, thank you for the insight. That was indeed the error. I was comparing one field that was string, vs another that was an integer. I converted the string field to a numeric field, made some adjustments to the script, and the script ran well.
    – saoirse
    Commented Jun 21, 2017 at 23:51
  • Could you please post your working code as an answer to your own question for future users with the same problem.
    – Michael Stimson
    Commented Jun 22, 2017 at 0:15

1 Answer 1

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Here is the code that I used to assign rows as either duplicate or unique. Prior to this, I converted the two fields that are compared to be of the same type (integer, rather than string). My error resulted from comparing a string field with a long integer field.

 checkfield = "gisID"
    ID_values = []
    with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(FC_1, [checkfield]) as cursor:
            for row in cursor:
                ID_values.append(row[0])
    del cursor

    with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor (FC_2, [checkfield, "Type"]) as uCurs:
        for uRow in uCurs:
            print (uRow[0])
            if uRow [0] in ID_values:
                uRow [1] = "duplicate"
                uCurs.updateRow(uRow)
            else:
                uRow [1] = "unique"
                uCurs.updateRow(uRow)
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