Adding description to layer package via arcpy

Question

I am trying to add description to layer and then make a layer package of multiple files at once. Everything works just fine, but the formatting of description is just wrong.

I want to add new lines after each line. What i tried is adding \n, \r \n, '\n', '\r \n', \u000d,
.

None of these are working.I simply ran out of ideas. In help there is nothing about the formatting.

files = arcpy.ListRasters()
name = "Hazard Index"
description = "Hazard Index \
 \
 Ranges of depths for different level of hazard \
 \
 Depth (d)\
 \
 not flooded No Hazard 0" 
for file in files:
 raster_layer = arcpy.MakeRasterLayer_management (file, file[:-4])
 #raster_layer.name = file[:-4]
 arcpy.ApplySymbologyFromLayer_management(raster_layer, layer)
 lyr = arcpy.SaveToLayerFile_management (raster_layer, output + file[:-4] + ".lyr")
 raster_lyr = arcpy.mapping.Layer(str(lyr))
 raster_lyr.description = description
 raster_lyr.name = file[:-4]
 arcpy.PackageLayer_management(raster_lyr, output + file[:-4], "PRESERVE", "", "", "", "", "", "", summary, tags)
 print "Package created for: " + file
 os.remove(str(lyr))

result is (I did not copy all of the text here, but you get the idea)

result

Answer 1

Sometimes the best way to find how to do something is to see how ArcMap does it.

I added a raster layer to my map, and set a Description in the layer properties

enter image description here

I then used arcpy to show me that description (using ArcMap's built-in Python window). Note I did not use print, as that won't show the escape characters.

>>> raster_lyr.description
u'This is a\r\nraster layer\r\ndescription'

As you can see from the result, to force a new line in the layer description you need to use a combination of \r and \n

Therefore, in your code to force those new lines you can enter the following:

description = "Hazard Index\r\n\r\nRanges of depths for different level of hazard \r\n\r\nDepth (d)\r\n\r\nnot flooded No Hazard 0"
raster_lyr.description = description

enter image description here

• Jan Doležal: Well, I guess I just put a space between \r\n, because I used something similar. Thank you very much.