[Tutor] ....and another thing!

[Andrei Kulakov]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 10:17:39AM -0700, kromag@nsacom.net wrote:
> In the following:
> 
> mport random
import random
> import string
> cards=open('\windows\desktop\cards.txt','r')
'r' is redundant..
> schmack=cards.readlines()
> counter=0
> while counter <10:
> 	total_cards=len(schmack)
> 	choose=random.randint(1,string.atoi(`total_cards`))
?? wouldn't random.randint(1,total_cards) work just as well?

> 	chosen=schmack[choose] 
> 	del schmack[choose]
> 	print chosen
> 	counter=counter+1
> 
> 
> I will get the occasional:
> 
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "reader.py", line 9, in ?
>     chosen=schmack[choose] 
> IndexError: list index out of range
> >Exit code: 1
> 
> It seems to me that:
> 
> total_cards=len(schmack)
> 
> should recalculate the number of items in the list with each iteration of the 
> loop. Since there are 72 items in the list, and one item is removed from the 
> list at the end of every iteration, it stands to reason that the list index 
> should be accurately recalculated by len(). Where am I going wrong?

I'm not sure, but maybe it's off-by-one error? Anyway, if you use
random.choice(), it should be just fine.

> 
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