Questions tagged [python]
This challenge is related to the Python language. Note that challenges that require the answers to be in a specific language are generally discouraged.
143 questions
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Tips for golfing in Python
What general tips do you have for golfing in Python? I'm looking for ideas which can be applied to code-golf problems and which are also at least somewhat specific to Python (e.g. "remove comments" is ...
- 13k
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votes
11
answers
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How on earth did llhuii output the Evil Numbers in 42 bytes of Python?
This is a tips question for golfing in Python concerning the Evil Numbers question on Anarchy Golf.
An number is evil if its binary expansion has an even number of 1's. The challenge is to print the ...
- 150k
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votes
27
answers
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Honest Rock, Paper, Scissors
Many people consider RPS to be a game of chance. If both players play unpredictably, the best strategy is to play randomly. However, let's introduce a bit of predictability to it.
Each bot will have ...
- 7,315
58
votes
49
answers
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A game of dice, but avoid number 6
Tournament over!
The tournament is now over! The final simulation was run during the night, a total of \$3*10^8\$ games. The winner is Christian Sievers with his bot OptFor2X. Christian Sievers also ...
- 7,017
55
votes
37
answers
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Robot Roulette: High stakes robot gambling
Final Standings
+----------------------------------+---------+---------+---------+----------------------------+
| Name | Score | WinRate | TieRate | Elimination ...
- 691
43
votes
17
answers
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Tips for restricted source in Python
Just like code-golf, restricted-source pushes one to exploit quirks and hidden features of the Python language. We already have a place to collect all these tips for code-golf, those for restricted-...
- 103k
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votes
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answers
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Noisy Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma
In this challenge, you will play the noisy iterated prisoner's dilemma.
The Prisoner's dilemma is a scenario in game theory where there are two players, each with two options: cooperate, or defect. ...
- 42.3k
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votes
3
answers
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Primality testing formula
Your goal is to determine whether a given number n is prime in the fewest bytes. But, your code must be a single Python 2 expression on numbers consisting of only
...
- 150k
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Build a golfing language with me
A lot of PPCG users helped with the creation of this challenge, both in chat and the Sandbox, specifically Martin Ender, AdmBorkBork, Emigna and user202729
Our community has found it necessary to ...
- 50.9k
37
votes
4
answers
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FOIL Python's strong typing!
Your task is to write some code in Python 2 or 3 such that this expression:
(a+b)(c+d) == a*c + b*c + a*d + b*d
will evaluate to ...
- 15.6k
33
votes
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answers
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Python workarounds for assignment in lambda
This is a tips question for golfing in Python.
In Python golfing, it's common for a submission to be a function defined as a lambda. For example,
...
- 150k
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votes
34
answers
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First-price sealed-bid auction
Final Result
The competition is over. Congratulations to hard_coded!
Some interesting facts:
In 31600 out of 40920 auctions (77.2%), the winner of the first round ...
- 2,431
32
votes
7
answers
9k
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Golf Practice: Python [closed]
This is a challenge of practicing golf optimization in Python -- reusable tricks and shortcuts to shave off a few characters. Many will be familiar to Python golfers and use common ideas from the ...
- 150k
27
votes
7
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How do I alias member functions in Python?
In Python, one can save bytes by aliasing functions that are used repeatedly. For example:
r=range
a=r(100)
b=r(200)
c=r(300)
However, when the functions are ...
- 6,396
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votes
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answers
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Is this series of quotes valid Python?
Python string parsing has quite a few edge cases. This is a string:
"a"
Putting 2 strings immediately after each other implicitly concatenates them, so ...
- 14.4k
27
votes
13
answers
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Adventurers in the Ruins
Test Driver • Challenge Discussion • Submit Adventurer
(Image Source)
Several rival adventurers are raiding the ruins for treasure, but they can only carry so much at a time and have their ...
- 10k
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votes
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answers
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How can this code be more "golfed"?
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I found this similar question so I'll go ahead.
I'm very new to code golfing, so keep your smothered laughs and throw-up emoji's to yourselves ...
- 323
22
votes
1
answer
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Golfing Python string literals
Background
Python 3 has many types of string literals. For example, the string this 'is' an exa\\m/ple can be represented as:
...
- 17.9k
20
votes
19
answers
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Iterated Prisoner's Trilemma
CHALLENGE STATUS: OPEN
Comment, open a PR, or otherwise yell at me if I'm missing your bot.
Prisoner's dilemma ... with three choices. Crazy, huh?
Here's our payoff matrix. Player A on the left, B ...
- 611
20
votes
1
answer
805
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How to solve the LCM in 50 bytes of Python
I've recently stumbled upon a Russian site called acmp.ru, in which one of the tasks, HOK, asks us to find the LCM of two positive integers. The full statement, translated to English is as follows:
...
- 23.4k
19
votes
1
answer
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How can I use cmp(a,b) with Python3?
I was told that using the cmp function can be very useful in code-golf. But unfortunately, Python 3 doesn't have a cmp function.
...
- 261
19
votes
4
answers
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Is there a shorter way to get user input in python?
This is not a challenge. I'm wondering if it's at all possible to get user input into two separate variables in python (2 or 3) with less than 19 bytes. These are all the shortest I can get:
...
- 60.1k
19
votes
2
answers
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Are these lists equal?
As you may very well know python has lists. As you might not know these lists can contain themselves.
a = []
a.append(a)
Python 2
Python 3
These are cool and ...
- 103k
18
votes
3
answers
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Is there a shorter way to assign one of two variables in Python?
This is a tips question for golfing in python.
In multiple golfs I've done in Python, a fixed value is assigned to one of two variables chosen by a Boolean. The chosen variable is overwritten by the ...
- 150k
18
votes
16
answers
3k
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Adversarial Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma
In this challenge, you will play the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, but with a twist: There's also an adversary trying to mess you up!
The Prisoner's dilemma is a scenario in game theory where there are ...
- 42.3k
17
votes
10
answers
9k
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Crash (i.e. cause the interpreter to stop working and force close) Python [closed]
I would like to see who can make Python have a fatal crash with the most creative code. This means that when the program runs, Windows for example, will take over and pop up with something like “IDLE ...
- 1,367
17
votes
24
answers
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Prisoner's Dilemma v.3 - Petri Dilemma
A mad scientist has just created a new species of bacterium! He has decided to name it Noblus Gentlemanus, after observing its behaviour. However, his bacteria have ran out of food, and have ...
- 7,315
17
votes
19
answers
6k
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The Dating Game / Secretary Problem
The bots are looking for love. Can you help them?
The rules
The goal of this game is find the bot you have the highest compatibility with. However, robots, who are inexperienced at dating are unable ...
- 14.4k
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votes
4
answers
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Get the lowest possible pylint score within 128 bytes of python
pylint has no lower bound on the scores it will give your code. It uses the following metric to score code, with the maximum score being 10:
...
- 181
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Abstract Syntax Tree Golfing: FizzBuzz, Python
Summary
Implement FizzBuzz in Python, with the fewest possible tokens.
Challenge
Write a program that prints the decimal numbers from 1 to 100 inclusive. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” ...
- 42.3k
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votes
3
answers
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Golfing with Python Import
When is it beneficial to use inline, single use importing in Python?
For example:
__import__("x").doSomething()
Is the above ever shorter than the below?
...
- 23.6k
17
votes
2
answers
1k
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Maximum number of PEP8 violations in a single line
Your task is to write a file which contains a line with many pep8 violations.
The rules:
We use pep8 version 1.5.7 and the default settings.
Calling pep8 with other command line options or using ...
- 903
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votes
17
answers
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Liars and Guessers
Github
You have probably played, and may even have written a program to play, a simple number guessing game. If so, this probably looks familiar:
...
- 843
16
votes
8
answers
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Omit needless spaces for me
A great Python golfing tip is to omit needless spaces. But if you are like me, you don't always have the time to search for which spaces to remove. If only there was a way to speed up the process...
...
- 23.4k
16
votes
4
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Tips for golfing with numpy, scipy, or pylab
There's already a comprehensive list of tips for python here, so what I'm asking for are tips that specifically apply to using the numpy, ...
- 658
15
votes
12
answers
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The Celestial Bureaucracy KoTH
In Imperial China, ranks in society were not decided by birth or wealth, but by a person's ability to excel in the Imperial Examinations. The Jade Emperor, divine ruler of the Heavens, has called for ...
- 558
14
votes
16
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Speed up, slowpoke!
In this king-of-the-hill challenge, you will program a bot, consisting of a python function of the form
def BOTNAME(info, me, round):
pass # ... main body
...
- 1,693
14
votes
7
answers
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Chopsticks mutated with points KoTH
Basic rules (different from mine)
Story
It is the year 4579, humans now have 2 hands with 1001 fingers each. Chopsticks has become based off of points. And @Dennis has more rep then @Martin... Hand ...
user63187
14
votes
1
answer
9k
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Concatenate lists of strings item-wise in Python
This is a tips question for golfing in python.
Suppose you have two lists of strings, and you want to concatenate the corresponding entries from each list. E.g. with ...
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Fastest python code to find a set of winning words in this game
This is a word game from a set of activity cards for children. Below the rules is code to find the best triplet using /usr/share/dict/words. I thought it was an interesting optimization problem, and ...
- 93
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1
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Python advice: Portability of introspective function call
In Python, you can use the dir function on any object to get a list of the names of its instance functions:
...
- 31.8k
13
votes
5
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Add comments to a Python script and make it a bilingual Python/C++ “program”
Given the following Python 3 script:
def greet():
print("Hello, world!")
greet()
Prepend some lines to this text file so that it can be both executed as a ...
- 327
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4
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Strategies for representing a given large integer using arithmetic expression
I have a specific number in mind, but it's part of a challenge I'm doing, and I don't want people to do (all) the work for me.
Here is a number which has the same digits, but shuffled:
...
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What is the minimum set of characters with which you can write any valid python program? [duplicate]
The proof of the set of characters is that there is a translator which takes any ascii python program as input and produces a limited character set version of the program. The limited character set ...
vishvananda
13
votes
1
answer
1k
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Am I code-golfing properly?
I am curious if I am Code Golfing properly. I set the challenge for myself to make a small hashing program into a single statement in Python. I first started off with:
...
- 241
13
votes
3
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Auto-meta-code-golf
You are sick of all of the codegolf challenges. Hence you decide to write a program that will automatically golf some Python code for you. There are 3 test cases:
...
- 14.5k
13
votes
1
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Let's write a Minifier
Background
Minifiers are used, commonly, when serving JavaScript to your Web Browser. It is commonly used to reduce the number of bytes that have to be sent. Saving bandwidth is useful for obvious ...
- 2,535
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votes
13
answers
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Smallest python script to print even numbers 0 to 100
I'm work on a problem which I set myself for fun, which is to create a python script which prints the even numbers from 0 to 100. The challenge is to make the script as small as possible. This is what ...
- 285
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KOTH - Loaded RPS
Contest permanently opened - Updated August 10th 2017
Even though on June 5th 2017 I declared a winner (who will be kept as the best answer) I'll be rnning new bots and updating the results.
June 5th ...
- 943
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votes
16
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Random Prisoner's Trilemma - Python 3 KOTH
The Prisoner's Dilemma, but with 3 choices, and the payoffs are random!
Each round, your bot recieves a 3x3 grid and chooses a row to play. The grid might be this:
...
- 2,189