Arcpy ListFields not returning string

Question

I am using Win server 2012 R2 and ArcGIS 10.2.2.

goal: match field names across featureclasses/tables in gdb

I thought that using python to retrieve field names from all featureclasses/tables in a gdb and then convert them to hex would allow me to easily compare and match similar features/tables for a data management exercise. I was wrong.

here's the code:

import os
arcpy.env.workspace= r"C:\Users\$user$\AppData\Roaming\ESRI\Desktop10.2\ArcCatalog\connection.sde"

feature_classes = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses()

for fc in feature_classes:
    fieldnames = arcpy.ListFields(fc)
    print fc
    for f in fieldnames:
        print (hex(f.name))

I get this error: Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 10, in TypeError: hex() argument can't be converted to hex

Print statements are there to help me keep track. According to esri's documentation. ListFields(fc).name should return a string. However it seems to be a object.

Answer 1

To see that you are encountering a Python rather than ArcPy error try this:

print(hex("ABC"))

I think you will see:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#0>", line 1, in <module>
    print(hex("ABC"))
TypeError: hex() argument can't be converted to hex

Python cannot convert a string to hex using its hex function.

ListFields returns field objects, and from a field object you can get its name as a string by using its name property.