Parsing Data for Label using Python

Question

I have field called PIN in my parcels shapefile. Formatting looks like this: xx-yy-zzzzz, just much longer. I want to split the first two sections on one line and the third (the z's) on the next. I figured I could do this with an expression in 'Label Expression', but do not know how to parse every record in a field.

So basically I want this to do something like this:

PIN[:5] + "\n" + PIN[6:]

What is the correct syntax?

Answer 1

I'm assuming you're having trouble with varying length of strings between hyphens and that your record is in the format xx-yy-zzzz, i.e. always two hyphens.

You can use advanced labeling ticking the advanced checkbox and choosing parser: python. A simple method is to use string.split which returns a list of the substrings between the split char:

def FindLabel([PIN]):
    Values = [PIN].split('-')
    return('{}-{}\n{}'.format(Values[0],Values[1],Values[2]))

Where \n is the newline character for a label.