Use UpdateCursor to update a field based on text in other field

Question

I am trying to find the correct syntax for the UpdateCursor where I look for part of a text from another field. I have many values of PCD zoning codes (PCD 03, PCD 04, PCD 05, etc). I want to calculate my "ZONING_DESC" field based off these PCD values in my "ZONING" field where all PCD values get calculated to "Planned Commercial Development". I know that '==' operator is finding exact values. Is there an operator for finding like values?

Here is my Code:

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(Zoning, ["ZONING", "ZONING_DESC"]) as cursor:
    if row[0] == 'PCD%':
        row[1] = 'Planned Commercial Development'
    cursor.updateRow(row)

Answer 1

In place of the SQL wildcard %, use the Python string method startswith as below.

with arcpy.da.UpdateCursor(Zoning, ["ZONING", "ZONING_DESC"]) as cursor:
    for row in cursor:
        if row[0].startswith('PCD'):
            row[1] = 'Planned Commercial Development'
            cursor.updateRow(row)

Answer 2

If you are simply trying to test if the ZONING field starts with PCD, then you can just write a python expression to test if the 3 left most characters equal PCD. That would look something like:

if row[0][:3] == 'PCD':

You may want to check out documentation on String Slices (such as at https://developers.google.com/edu/python/strings)