Generating random words

Question

I'm trying to create a string that has a set amount of different words I include in a list, however the code I use only uses one word at random, not a different word for every word printed.

This is my code:

import random

words = ['hello', 'apple', 'something', 'yeah', 'nope', 'lalala']
print random.choice(words) * 5

An example output would be:

hellohellohellohellohello

An example expected output would be:

appleyeahhellonopesomething

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

"multiplying" a string will print the string multiple times. E.g., print '=' * 30 would print a line of 30 "=", that's why you are getting 5 times "hello" - it repeats the randomly chosen word 5 times.

import random, sys
words = ['hello', 'apple', 'something', 'yeah', 'nope', 'lalala']

for i in range(5):
    sys.stdout.write(random.choice(words)) 

using choice() will give you a set of 5 random selections. Note we use sys.std.write to the avoid the space successive print statements would put between words.

e.g., from two runs:

yeahsomethinghelloyeahlalala

and

somethingyeahsomethinglalalanope

choice()

Return a random element from the non-empty sequence seq. If seq is empty, raises IndexError.

Of course in Python 3.x, we could use print instead of sys.stdout.write and set its end value to ''. I.e.,

print(random.choice(words), end='')

Answer 2

You aren't calling random.choice(words) 5 times, you are getting an output of random.choice(words) and then multiplying in 5 times. With strings, it just repeats the string.

"abc" * 3 would give you "abcabcabc"

So depending on your randomly chosen word first, it just gets repeated 5 times.

Answer 3

If you don't want the words from your original list to be repeated, then you could use sample.

import random as rn
words = ['hello', 'apple', 'something', 'yeah', 'nope', 'lalala']

word = ''.join(rn.sample(words, 5))

Result:

>>> word
'yeahhellosomethingapplenope'

Answer 4

random.choice(words) * 5 executes random.choice only once and then multiplies the result by five, causing the same string to be repeated.

>>> import random
>>> words = ['hello', 'apple', 'something', 'yeah', 'nope', 'lalala']
>>> print ''.join(random.choice(words) for _ in range(5))
applesomethinghellohellolalala

Answer 5

import random
WORDS = ("Python","Java","C++","Swift","Assembly")
for letter in WORDS:
    position = random.randrange(len(WORDS))
    word = WORDS[position]
    print(word)