Parsing error SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal (line 5)

Question

I want to create a number of featureclass using a template featureclass

import arcpy
from arcpy import env
env.workspace = "C:\new_docs\BIO-FILES\GIS_prog\Lesson1"
arcpy.CreateFeatures_management('C:\new_docs\BIO-FILES\GIS_prog\results","Precip2009Readings.shp","POINT","Precip2008Readings.shp","Disabled","Disabled")

When I run the above code I get:

Parsing error SyntaxError: EOL while scanning string literal (line 5)

• PolyGeo: Welcome to GIS SE! As a new user be sure to take the Tour to learn about our focussed Q&A format. What happens when you run that code snippet?

Answer 1

You are getting that error because on line 5 you have opened a single quote without closing it.

Since you have used double rather than single quotes in the remainder of your code I suggest changing that single quote to a double quote.

Also, you need to let Python know that your pathnames should be interpreted as raw strings because the backslashes in a Python need to be escaped.

Try changing:

env.workspace = "C:\new_docs\BIO-FILES\GIS_prog\Lesson1"
arcpy.CreateFeatures_management('C:\new_docs\BIO-FILES\GIS_prog\results","Precip2009Readings.shp","POINT","Precip2008Readings.shp","Disabled","Disabled")

to

env.workspace = r"C:\new_docs\BIO-FILES\GIS_prog\Lesson1"
arcpy.CreateFeatureclass_management(r"C:\new_docs\BIO-FILES\GIS_prog\results","Precip2009Readings.shp","POINT","Precip2008Readings.shp","Disabled","Disabled")

• Young Engie Newton: Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Python27\ArcGIS10.3\Lib\site-packages\pythonwin\pywin\framework\scriptutils.py", line 326, in RunScript exec codeObject in main.__dict__ File "C:\Users\buo_isa\Documents\lessons\stest.py", line 5, in <module> arcpy.CreateFeatures_management("C:\new_docs\BIO-FILES\GIS_prog\results","Precip2009Readings.shp","POINT","Precip2008Readings.shp","Disabled","Disabled") AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'CreateFeatures_management'
• Young Engie Newton: hi i just edited the script and run it and i had the message above.
• GISGe: It's CreateFeatureclass_management() you should use, CreateFeatures_management() doesn't exist.
• PolyGeo: @YoungEngieNewton If you get new errors from the new code snippet that you are presenting then I think that should be done as a new question.