I'm trying to generate a random string using the elements of a different string, with the same length.
Ex) String: AGAACGC
I want a random string using only elements from the string above
Right now I have:
import random
seq = 'AGAACGC'
length = len(seq)
for blah in range(len(seq)): #Apologies for the lame variable names
x = random.randint(0,length - 1)
print seq[x]
And of course this will give me something like:
A
A
G
A
C
A
A
How would I alter the program so that it prints out my random string on one line?
I'm hoping for a relatively simple answer, as I'm still a beginner in python, so I don't want to get too fancy. But any help at all would be appreciated.
And is there a way to repeat the randomization 'n' number of times?
Say instead of 1 random string, I wanted 4 random strings on different lines. Is there an easy way doing this? (My newbish mind is telling me to repeat the loop 'n' times...but it needs to be a changeable number of randomized strings)
Sorry for asking. I'd really appreciate some help. I'm stuck on a bigger problem because I don't know how to do these steps.
In Python 3, there is a simple way to print a character without a newline, but in Python 2, there isn't.* So, the simplest way to do this is to build up the string, then print it at the end:
result = ''
for blah in range(len(seq)): #Apologies for the lame variable names
x = random.randint(0,length - 1)
result += seq[x]
print result
* There are two less simple ways: You can use from __future__ import print_function
and then use Python 3 print
syntax instead of Python 2, or you can use sys.stdout.write(seq[x])
for each character and then sys.stdout.write('\n')
and sys.stdout.flush()
at the end. But I don't think you want either of those.
However, there are a number of ways to improve this:
- Use
randrange(length)
instead of randint(0, length - 1)
.
- Use
random.choice(seq)
instead of using randrange
or randint
in the first place.
- Use
_
instead of blah
for "don't care" variables.*
- If you don't care about what you're iterating over, just that you're iterating once for each character, just do
for _ in seq:
, not for _ in range(len(seq)):
.
- Build up a list of letters, then call
''.join()
at the end, instead of building up a string.
- Use a comprehension instead of an explicit loop.
Putting that all together:
print ''.join(random.choice(seq) for _ in seq)
* Unless you're using gettext
for i18n, or something else that gives _
a special meaning. Most projects that do that come up with their own convention for "don't care" names—maybe __
, or dummy
. And of course blah
would be fine for such a project, as long as you used it consistently.
As for repeating it, your newbish mind is right; just use a loop. For example (taking the second version, but it'll work just as well with the first):
n = 4
for _ in range(n):
print ''.join(random.choice(seq) for _ in range(len(seq)))
That'll print out 4 different random strings. And if you set n
to 100, it'll print 100 different random strings.
You may want to write this in a function:
def print_random_strings(seq, n):
for _ in range(n):
print ''.join(random.choice(seq) for _ in range(len(seq)))
And then you can call it like:
print_random_strings(seq, 4)
But either way, your basic intuition is right on track.
That's exactly what random.sample
is meant for:
import random
seq = 'AGAACGC'
"".join(random.sample(seq, len(seq)))
# Gives you something like: 'CGAAACG'