How to select different option regardless of randomized variable-CodePudding

The question might be a little misleading, as there are no exact words to express my query shortly. What I want to do is make a random variable, and according to it pick one name from, let's say, 5 options. Then, pick another name from the same pool of options, however without being the same as the first name.

For example, if I have 5 students (John, Mary, Doug, Brandon, and Ava) and I want to choose between two of them, but not pick the same student twice.

Here is how I proceeded to choose the first variable using random.randint() function.

subj = random.randint(1, 3)
    if subj==1:
        subj1=='John'
    elif subj==2:
        subj1=='Mary'
    elif subj==3:
        subj1=='Doug'

(Note: value names are just an example)

Now for the second value, I have had some ideas, however I don't know how to complete it. Any help is appreciated!!

Have a great day.

P.S.: As far as I know there are no other similar questions, or at least I couldn't find any. If there are, please redirect me there.

CodePudding user response：

How about sampling directly from your list? The code below will select two students from your list at random.

import random

students = ['John', 'Mary', 'Doug', 'Brandon', 'Ava']
selection = random.sample(students, 2)

# Optional: Unpacking list
subj1, subj2 = selection

CodePudding user response：

You can use itertools.permutations() along with random.shuffle() like this

from itertools import permutations as perm
from random import shuffle

names = ["John", "Mary", "Doug", "Brandon", "Ava"]
res = list(perm(names, 2))
shuffle(res)

print(res.pop())

First, the names stores all the names in a list, and the permutations iterates through the list and returns all the permutations of 2 names each; this is stored as a list of tuples in res and the shuffle does what it says, it shuffles the list in a random order, and at last the pop returns the last item in it.

CodePudding user response：

you can do this:

 import random
 names = ['John','Mary','Doug','Ted','Mary']
 idx = random.sample(range(len(names)), len(names))
 for index in idx:
    print(names[index])

This will give you a list of unique generated random indices. based on this you can select the names(let's say you have all of them in a list) and pick them based on idx.