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Python Python Basics (2015) Letter Game App Random Item

How do you recreate random.choice()?

This is the only challenge I haven’t answered from “Python Basics.” For some reason this is the most challenging to me.

item.py
# EXAMPLE
# random_item("Treehouse")
# The randomly selected number is 4.
# The return value would be "h"
import random
def random_item(iterable):
    random_number = random.randint(0,len(iterable-1))
    if iterable[{}.format(random_number)] == random_number:
        return iterable[{}.format(random_number)]

2 Answers

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,271 Points

You're working to hard! Once you have the random number, just return the result of using it as an index on the iterable. No conditional or formatting needed.

Not sure why your trying to format the random number, perhaps you should read the challenge again. It just wants you to return the character at a random index, an index that is sellected randomly by the generator, that is between 0 and len(itr) - 1.. Your code should look something like this:

import random
def random_item(itr):
    char = random.randint(0, len(itr) - 1)
    return itr[char]