BUG-000140734 for ArcGIS Pro

Bug ID Number	BUG-000140734
Submitted	June 15, 2021
Last Modified	March 20, 2025
Applies to	ArcGIS Pro
Version found	2.8
Operating System	Windows OS
Operating System Version	10.0 64 Bit
Status	Will Not Be Addressed

Additional Information

This is a quirk of the is the operator in Python (which checks whether two objects point to the same memory), and how strings are stored (equivalent alphanumeric strings like 'Texas' point to the same object in memory when invoked, strings such as 'South Dakota' do not point to the same object in memory. The top answer at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16756699/is-operator-behaves-differently-when-comparing-strings-with-spaces describes this well). String equality has to be checked using == (which checks for value equality) for this reason.

Workaround

It is to be noted other operators can be used in the scenario to return the results when matching them up with the fields having values of either spaces or some other special characters.

Expression 1:

def Reclass(value1):

if value1 == 'South Dakota':

return 1

else:

return 0

Expression 2:

def Reclass(value1):

if 'South Dakota' in value1:

return 1

else:

return 0