Deleting multiple fields with same shapefile name using ArcGIS Desktop?

Question

I have many shapefiles. Each shapefile has a specific name which is the same as one of the column of data within the attribute table. For each shapefile, I would like to delete all the fields that don't have the same name as the shapefile name.

For example, shapefile might be named m_1. Within its attribute table, there will be lots of columns, which are named "gid", m_1, m_2, m_3, m_3 etc. I would like to delete all those fields except the column "gid" and "m_1". Below is my code, which doesn't work.

I'm new to programming.

import arcpy
arcpy.env.workspace = "D:\Paper"
fcList = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()

for fc in fcList:
    field_names = []
    field_names = [f.name for f in arcpy.ListFields(fcList)]
        if field_names <> fcList:
            arcpy.DeleteField_management(fc, field_names)

Answer 1

Create a list of fields for each shapefile, and exclude fields that can't/shouldn't be deleted. Those fields would be:

• OID Field
• shape field
• shapefile name field

Something like this:

import arcpy
import os

arcpy.env.workspace = "D:\Paper"
fcList = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()

for fc in fcList:
    desc = arcpy.Describe (fc)
    #shape field name
    shpFld = desc.shapeFieldName
    #oid field
    oidFld = desc.OIDFieldName
    #shapefile name field
    shpFileFld = os.path.splitext (fc) [0]
    #list fields
    delFlds = [f.name for f in arcpy.ListFields (fc)
               if not f.name in [shpFld, oidFld, shpFileFld]]

    #delete fields
    arcpy.DeleteField_managemnet (fc, delFlds)