Debugging invalid syntax error in ArcPy script with cursor and where clause?

Question

I've been trying to write a stand alone script to run any query from python, but I've run into a few problems. At first I tried this:

fc = "U:\RealGDB.gdb\acutalLayerName" 
Where = """"TOTAL NUMB FLOORS" = 2""" #TOTAL NUMB FLOORS is the actual field name.
cursor = arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, ("'TOTAL NUMB FLOORS'"), Where)

for row in cursor: #python crashes here
    print (row[0])

This crashes python. I've spent about a week trying to fix this and I can safely say that I'm completely lost. Every time I change the sql format to something else - when I add some quotes or brackets - I get an invalid syntax error. What's wrong with my sql; why does it cause python to crash at my for loop?

I imported arcpy and os. The table has about 84.4 records.

Answer 1

The Defining fields in tables page in the Online Help (with my bolding) says:

Field names must also start with a letter and not contain spaces or reserved words.

There may be other issues too so try using a field which does not have spaces (like FLOORS) in its name and run this as a test:

fc = r"U:\RealGDB.gdb\acutalLayerName" 
where_clause = "FLOORS = 2"
with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(fc, ["FLOORS"], where_clause) as cursor:
    for row in cursor: 
        print row[0]

Some other things I did were:

• renamed the variable from Where to where_clause - sometimes using a keyword (which Where may or may not be) can cause errors so I try to avoid them
• used with syntax as illustrated in the arcpy.da cursor documentation. The advantages of this are I think documented there and in other Q&As here.
• the structure of the where_clause is the simplest one that I know would do what you appeared to be trying to - they can get much more complex as illustrated in MANY Q&As here