I want to define a DBF table with field names which may contain ^ character. I am using the following table definition:
tbl_SubDBF = dbf.Table("..//output//Ttest.dbf", \
'B^AWG C(50); C^PTYPE C(200)')
I am getting a fieldspecerror as following:
field names must start with a letter, and can only contain letters, digits, and _
Is there a workaround (escape character) which allows me to define the headers mentioned above while creating dbf table?
I am using python 3.7
Original Answer
To the best of my knowledge, the dbf field spec does not allow for non-alphanumeric characters in field names. The only possible work-around at the moment is to subclass Table and replace the failing method with one that allows the strange characters.
Updated Answer
Looking at the method in question (add_fields), replacing it would be a major endeavor. So as of dbf 0.98.0 one can use whatever strange characters one wants/needs in fields names, but dbf will generate a warning about it:
<module>:<line_no>: FieldNameWarning: "p^type invalid: field names should start with a letter, and only contain letters, digits, and _
some_dbf.add_fields('p^type C(25)')
To suppress that warning one can add:
import warnings
warnings.filterwarnings('ignore', '', dbf.FieldNameWarning)