On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 6:11 AM, garywood <python...@sky.com> wrote: > I had a task in a book to pick 5 items from a list of 26 ensuring the > items are not repeated > >
If the list is unique of 26 elements is guaranteed to be unique, simply: >>> import random >>> random.sample(list, 5) ['g', 'y', 'i', 'n', 'x'] If the list isn't unique: >>> import random >>> random.sample(set(list), 5) ['r', 'e', 'b', 'k', 'i'] If you want to combine them all into a single word as you do in your example: >>> import random >>> ''.join(random.sample(set(list), 5)) 'wmhsq' --Stephen
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