Adding hyphen in ArcGIS Field Calculator to merge two columns?

Question

I am trying to build a field calculator expression to merge two columns into one. I am looking for the word that makes it a range.

Example: I have 2 columns in elevation, From and To. I want to make them like "4100 - 4200" where I add the hyphen. How do I do that ?

table showing data being worked with

Answer 1

You will want to concatenate the two fields together.

To do this in ArcMap you can use the VB Script function "&". So using your example, the calculation would be

[FROM] & "-" & [TO]

You could also use Python syntax, in which case your code would be:

str(!FROM!) + "-" + str(!TO!)

With Python you want to be sure to enclose the fields in the string function -- str()--, so that Python knows you are trying to concatenate two strings together, and not do a mathematical computation.

• matt wilkie: just for fun, you could also use the format string python operator: "%s - %s" % (str(!FROM!), str(!TO!)), which in this case is more complicated than the above, but is easier if you want to more extended concatenations, e.g. "Min %s - to - %s Max" % (str(!FROM!), str(!TO!))