Generate random strings of fixed length from given characters with equal occurance

Question

I want to generate random strings from a list of characters C (e.g. C = ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D']). This random string shall have length N (e.g. N = 32). Every character should occur equally often - in that example 8 times.

How can I implement that each character occurs equally often in here:

''.join(random.choice(C) for i in range(N))

Or is there a better way?

I see nothing wrong with the way you are doing it.

zvone
– zvone

2016-09-16 17:24:30 +00:00
Commented Sep 16, 2016 at 17:24 — zvone
– zvone, Commented Sep 16, 2016 at 17:24
Yup looks good the way it is

nullByteMe
– nullByteMe

2016-09-16 17:24:55 +00:00
Commented Sep 16, 2016 at 17:24 — nullByteMe
– nullByteMe, Commented Sep 16, 2016 at 17:24

mgilson · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-16 17:25:08Z

1

I don't think you can guarantee that each item is picked with the same frequency if you use random.choice. Each choice is equally likely which isn't the same thing.

The best way to do this would be to maintain a list of characters and shuffle it...

characters = C * 8
random.shuffle(characters)
print(''.join(characters))

Or, if you want a bunch of them:

def get_random_strings(characters, count, N):
    """Yield `N` strings that contain each character in `characters` `count` times."""
    characters = list(characters) * count
    for _ in xrange(N):
        random.shuffle(characters)
        yield ''.join(characters)

answered Sep 16, 2016 at 17:25

mgilson

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