On Nov 13, 6:47 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Paul McGuire: > > > coinflip = lambda : int(random.random()*2) > > I warmly suggest you to use this instead: > randrange(2) > > Bye, > bearophile
Really? Looking at randrange, it sure seems to do a lot of work in pursuit of handling all possible cases for specifying range boundaries, step values, etc. In fact, I think flipping a coin is a common enough task that it might even merit an addition to the random module API. It certainly would allow us to get rid of all of these variations on the theme, such as "if randrange(100) > 50", or "random.choice([True,False])". For that matter, my own obscure int (random.random() * 2) is better implemented using a direct comparison to random.random(), no need for multiplication, or int calls or anything else. Having an explicit method would also help prevent minor erroneous bugs like "if random.random() > 0.5", given that the range of random.random() is (0.0, 1.0] (that is, the lower half would be 0 inclusive to 0.5 exclusive, and the upper half 0.5 inclusive to 1.0 exclusive). If I would change anything, I think I prefer the name coin_toss over coinflip. So: coin_toss = lambda : random.random() >= 0.5 -- Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
