Examples of how to select randomly keys from a list in python 3:
Create a dictionary
Lets first create a dictionary in python
d = {'a':1,'b':2,'c':3,'d':4,'e':5}
Select randomly a key using random.choice()
To select a random key from a dictionary, a solution is to use random.choice():
import randomrandom.choice(list(d))
returns for example
'c'
choice can be used multiple times to select randomly multiple elements:
random.choice(list(d))
returns for example:
'e'
To create a list of keys random selected randomly, a solution is to use a list comprehension:
r = [random.choice(list(d)) for i in range(2)]
returns for example
['a', 'f']
Another example with 10 elements selected radnomly:
r = [random.choice(list(d)) for i in range(10)]
returns for example
['e', 'd', 'b', 'b', 'c', 'b', 'a', 'a', 'b', 'c']
Note: to get always the same output, a solution is to use a seed:
random.seed(42)r = [random.choice(list(d)) for i in range(10)]
will always returns the same.
Create a random sample using random.sample()
Another solution is to create a sample without replacement:
random.sample(list(d),n)
where l is the list and n the sample's size ( n <= len(l) ).
random.sample(list(d),2)
returns for example
['e', 'a']
