CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonlistrandom
Amar Kalabić
Amar Kalabić

Reputation: 898

Random choice not working in this case?

I'm trying to make it so I get random choice out of an list of players... It's fairly simple, I know, but I can't get it to work, I get some random letters, like "i" or "e" as result :O

Here's that part of code:

print "p.getName()", p.getName()
randomtarget = choice(p.getName())

p is a list of players, getName is function to get their names, I get them successfully, so this is what I got:

22:29:21 [INFO] p.getName() Brixishuge
22:29:21 [INFO] Random target: i

obviously, random target should be "Brixishuge", since it's only possible target, but I get "i" as result, why? What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 8123

Answers (2)

sabbahillel
sabbahillel

Reputation: 4425

Your input to choice must be a list so that you will return one of the elements of that list. Here you are putting in a string so that choice will return one of the characters of that string.

import random
p = ['Brixishuge', 'user2971511', 'sabbahillel']
random.choice(p)

If your input was ['Brixishuge'] it would work the way you expect.

Python Number choice() Method

Description The method choice() returns a random item from a list, tuple, or string.

Syntax Following is the syntax for choice() method:

choice( seq ) Note: This function is not accessible directly, so we need to import random module and then we need to call this function using random static object.

Parameters seq -- This could be a list, tuple, or string...

Return Value This method returns a random item.

Upvotes: 2

avoid3d
avoid3d

Reputation: 620

random.choice takes a list of things to choose from.

Since you are giving it just a string (p.getName() returns a string) it is treating the string as a list of characters, from which it is choosing a character ('i' in your case.)

You probably meant this:

randomtarget = choice([p.getName()])

You can make a list either by putting something in square brackets or by calling the list function.

l = [p.getName()]
l = list(p.getName())

Apon further reading, it apears that p is not a list of players but one single player.

If you want the name of a random player you should try this:

player = choice(list_of_players)
name = player.getName()

Upvotes: 4

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