Changing name of attribute field in shapefile using ArcPy?

Question

I have two files:

• a shapefile called: Habitat.shp
• from the ZonalStatisticsAsATable-function a .dbf-file: ZonalStatisticsTable.dbf.

In the .dbf-file is a coloumn in which I am interested. It is the MEAN-coloumn. I want to join that field to the shapefile. Since I am forced to use the shapefile (there is no way a GDB is possible), I wanted basically to join the MEAN-coloumn to the shapefile and change then the name to Fox_Mean. Here is my code:

Habitat="C:\\Files\\Habitat.shp"
ZonalStatisticsOutputTable="C:\\Files\\ZonalStatisticsTable.dbf"
arcpy.JoinField_management(Habitat, "ZoneID", ZonalStatisticsOutputTable, "ZoneID", "MEAN")
arcpy.AlterField_management(Habitat, "MEAN", "Fox_Mean")

However since I am working on a shapefile the AlterField_management-tool does not work.

Is there any other way of renaming that MEAN-field without using GDB or any other additional library?

I thought maybe about simply renaming the MEAN-field in the .dbf-file, but then a new library is needed. An alternative would maybe be to just copy the content of the coloumn to a new field and delete the MEAN-field then. However I am unsure if that does not screw everything up.

Answer 1

Creating the new field, calculating it, and deleting the old field is the way to go.

arcpy.AddField_management (Habitat, "Fox_Mean", "DOUBLE")
arcpy.CalculateField_management (Habitat, "Fox_Mean", "[MEAN]")
arcpy.DeleteField_management (Habitat, "MEAN")