[NotTheBest]

I'm working on the Bulls and Cows game. I've got most of the code finished, I'm just having trouble generating the random numbers.

I need to make a structure that will generate a number, check if it's a duplicate and then go from there. If it's a duplicate it will loop back around to generate another number. Once it is not a duplicate, the number will be loaded onto an array.


Example of what I have.

num = [0] * size  
for i in size: 	
    var = random.randint(1,9) 	
    k=i-1 	
    while(k>=0): 		
        if var = num[k]: 			
            i-=1 			
            k=-2 				 	
    num[i] = var

Thanks for the help!

[dariyoosh]

I don't know that game so I cannot help you about the algorithm, yet there is something that attracted my attention and that was the fact that you search an element inside a list by implementing a loop, why don't you simply use the python IN operator?

>>> numbersList = [1,147,20,12]
>>> 20 in numbersList
True
>>>
>>> 40 in numbersList
False

[NotTheBest]

Originally Posted by dariyoosh

I don't know that game so I cannot help you about the algorithm, yet there is something that attracted my attention and that was the fact that you search an element inside a list by implementing a loop, why don't you simply use the python IN operator?

>>> numbersList = [1,147,20,12]
>>> 20 in numbersList
True
>>>
>>> 40 in numbersList
False

If I use the IN operator, that won't help me generate unique numbers will it?

Sorry I'm new to Python.

[Scorpions4ever]

It seems you want to generate a list of numbers from 1..9 or some such finite quantity and make sure that each number only occurs once.

In that case, it is faster to simply take a unique list of numbers and randomly shuffle it. This guarantees that the numbers are unique and will not be repeated. You can use random.shuffle() to shuffle a list.

Then simply iterate through the array and pick each element of the list as your random number.

[NotTheBest]

Originally Posted by Scorpions4ever

It seems you want to generate a list of numbers from 1..9 or some such finite quantity and make sure that each number only occurs once.

In that case, it is faster to simply take a unique list of numbers and randomly shuffle it. This guarantees that the numbers are unique and will not be repeated. You can use random.shuffle() to shuffle a list.

Then simply iterate through the array and pick each element of the list as your random number.

I've used random.sample like you suggested. The problem now is when I go to compare my random number to a user input, it won't work. I assume this is because you can't compare int's and strings? What can I do to fix this?

num = random.sample(range(1,9), 4)
print(num)

num = random.sample(range(1,9), 4) 
print(num)   
playagain = "y"  
player = input("Enter your name: ") 
while playagain == "y": 	
guess = input("Enter your guess: ") 	
    while len(guess) != size: 		
        print("Invalid try again") 		
        guess = input("Enter your guess: ") 		 	 	 	
   if guess == num: 		
       print("Congratulations, you guessed it correctly")

[Scorpions4ever]

num = random.sample(range(1,9), 4)
print(num)

This creates a list of 4 numbers.

guess = input("Enter your guess: ") 	
while len(guess) != size: 		
   print("Invalid try again") 		
   guess = input("Enter your guess: ") 		 	 	 	
   if guess == num: 		
       print("Congratulations, you guessed it correctly")

guess == num won't work because guess is a string and num is a list. If num was a single integer, then you could do something like:

   if int(guess) == num: 		
       print("Congratulations, you guessed it correctly")

or

   if guess == str(num): 		
       print("Congratulations, you guessed it correctly")

i.e. make them the same type before comparison.

[NotTheBest]

So do I need to change the way I find my random number, or is it possible to change num to a string? Because

Int_num = int(num)
if guess == Int_num: 		
       print("Congratulations, you guessed it correctly")

doesn't seem to work.

[Scorpions4ever]

You're not converting it correctly. guess is a string, so the other end needs to be converted to a string type as well before comparison (another alternative is to convert guess to int and then compate):

str_num = str(num)
if guess == str_num: 		
       print("Congratulations, you guessed it correctly")