Re: [users] Re: random lines

["Thomas J. Hamman" <hawk3@eagnet.com>]

On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 06:12:49PM +0200, Martin F. Krafft wrote:
> > from random import *
> > from linecache import *
> > print getline('~/.muttrc',randrange(1,20))
> 
> except that hardcodes the file length, does it not?

Yep, like I said it was a quickie example.  Here's something that
wouldn't have the number of lines hard-coded:

--begin code--

from random import *

listfile = open('filename','r')
albumlist = listfile.readlines()
listfile.close()
print albumlist[randrange(0, len(albumlist))]

--end code--

I apologize for the noncreative variable names. :)  Anyway, a quick
explication in case you haven't used Python much:

The first line (after importing random) opens a file called 'filename'
for reading and puts it into a file object called listfile.

The second line reads every line in listfile and puts it into a list of
strings called albumlist.  albumlist[0] is the first line, albumlist[1]
is the second line, and so on.

The third line just closes the file, which is no longer needed.

The fourth line prints albumlist[#] where # is a random number between 0
(the first line) and len(albumlist).  If the file is 5 lines, then
len(albumlist) returns 5, the last line of the file is albumlist[4], and
randrange will give us a number between 0 and 4 (correlating with lines
1 through 5).

I like Python. :)

Sorry for the excessive explanation if you didn't need it; it's sunday
and I'm bored.

-- 
Tom
"Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves."
        -Abraham Lincoln