Problem with algorithm

[Michael Bentley]

On Apr 13, 2007, at 9:19 AM, Paul McGuire wrote:

> If you just expand the length to five million* or so, one of those
> strings will contain all the works of Shakespeare.

Not likely, even with a tiny sampling of the works of Shakespeare:

# :-)

import string
import random

def main(bardText, maxTries=5000000):
     tries = 0
     while tries < maxTries:
         tries += 1
         attempt = []
         for letter in bardText.lower():
             if random.choice(
                 string.lowercase[:26]
                 + string.punctuation
                 + ' '
                 ) == letter:
                 attempt.append(letter)
             else:
                 break
         if len(attempt) >= 4:
             print '%d: %s' % (
                 tries,
                 ''.join(attempt)
             )

if __name__ == "__main__":
     main("Alas, poor Yorick!")