Simple field calculator equation in ArcGIS 10.2.1 not working with python parser

Question

I am trying to calculate a percentage in a field in a table. customers and total_customers are short integer fields.

arcpy.AddField_management(tableSepSel2, "percent", "DOUBLE")
arcpy.CalculateField_management(tableSepSel2, "percent", "!customers! / !total_customers!*100", "PYTHON_9.3")

I don't get any errors but all the values in the percent field are zero when most of them should not be zero.

If I go into ArcMap and use the field calculator with the Python parser, the same thing happens. However, when I choose the VBScript parser in ArcMap and redo the code using brackets it works fine.

Answer 1

I'm guessing customers and total_customers are integer fields, and the equation is using integer math, yielding the rounded-down result (0 * 100) in every case except where customers == total_customers (1 * 100).

Use this equation to get decimal calculations:

"float(!customers!) / float(!total_customers!) * 100"

• Andrew: Aha! Yes they are integer fields. That worked. Thanks!