CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonrandommodulegeneratornames
specz
specz

Reputation: 29

Python help ---> random name selection from text file

I want to have a list of names such as "john, jack, daniels, whisky, susan, alex" in a .txt file called 'names'.

Now, I want to import that file into my 'script' and use the import random module.

This is what I have:

import random

name = ( "jay" , "luis" , "bob" , "sofi", "susan" ) 

x = random.sample(name,input( "please enter the number of volunteers needed" ))
print x

instead of having name = ( xxxxxxxxxxxxx ), I want to have name = .txt file.

Everytime i want to change the names I can just change it in the .txt file.

I'm trying to make a program for my schools volunteer club, so the number of volunteers chosen is at random and not biased. That way everyone has a somewhat fair chance. :]

Upvotes: 1

Views: 6739

Answers (5)

user688635
user688635

Reputation:

Where:

$ cat rand_nms.txt
jay
luis
bob
sofi

Then:

import random

contents=[]

with open("rand_nms.txt") as rnd:
    for line in rnd:
        line=line.strip()
        contents.append(line)

print contents
print "random name:", contents[random.randint(0,len(contents)-1)]

Result:

['jay', 'luis', 'bob', 'sofi', 'susan']
random name: luis

Upvotes: 0

Matt Sweeney
Matt Sweeney

Reputation: 2130

welcome to python :-]

how about something like this?

import random
fid = open('names.txt', 'r')
names = fid.readlines()

number_needed = raw_input('please enter the number of volunteers needed: ')

print random.sample(names, int(number_needed))

Upvotes: 2

James Felix Black
James Felix Black

Reputation: 300

Assuming a list of names in names.txt, one per line (and that you don't have a hundred million names in there):

import random
number_of_volunteers = 4
print random.sample([n[:-1] for n in open("./names.txt").readlines()], number_of_volunteers)

Upvotes: 0

Adam Lear
Adam Lear

Reputation: 38778

file = open('myFile.txt', 'r')
names = file.read().split(',')
file.close()

Use that in place of your name = ... line and you should be good to go.

You can read more about reading and writing files in Python here.

Note that I assumed you'll have a comma-delimited list in the file. You can also put each name on a separate line and do names = file.readlines() instead.

Upvotes: 3

Zach Kelling
Zach Kelling

Reputation: 53859

You could simply fill a text file with names delimited by line:

with open('names.txt') as f:
    names = f.read().splitlines()

Upvotes: 1

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