Shuffling a list of objects

Question

I have a list of objects and I want to shuffle them. I thought I could use the random.shuffle method, but this seems to fail when the list is of objects. Is the

Answer 1

The shuffling process is "with replacement", so the occurrence of each item may change! At least when when items in your list is also list.

E.g.,

ml = [[0], [1]] * 10

After,

random.shuffle(ml)

The number of [0] may be 9 or 8, but not exactly 10.

Answer 2

>>> import random
>>> a = ['hi','world','cat','dog']
>>> random.shuffle(a,random.random)
>>> a
['hi', 'cat', 'dog', 'world']

It works fine for me. Make sure to set the random method.

Answer 3

def shuffle(_list):
    if not _list == []:
        import random
        list2 = []
        while _list != []:
            card = random.choice(_list)
            _list.remove(card)
            list2.append(card)
        while list2 != []:
            card1 = list2[0]
            list2.remove(card1)
            _list.append(card1)
        return _list

Answer 4

It took me some time to get that too. But the documentation for shuffle is very clear:

shuffle list x in place; return None.

So you shouldn't print(random.shuffle(b)). Instead do random.shuffle(b) and then print(b).

Answer 5

import random

class a:
    foo = "bar"

a1 = a()
a2 = a()
a3 = a()
a4 = a()
b = [a1,a2,a3,a4]

random.shuffle(b)
print(b)

shuffle is in place, so do not print result, which is None, but the list.

Answer 6

As you learned the in-place shuffling was the problem. I also have problem frequently, and often seem to forget how to copy a list, too. Using sample(a, len(a)) is the solution, using len(a) as the sample size. See https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/random.html#random.sample for the Python documentation.

Here's a simple version using random.sample() that returns the shuffled result as a new list.

import random

a = range(5)
b = random.sample(a, len(a))
print a, b, "two list same:", a == b
# print: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4] [2, 1, 3, 4, 0] two list same: False

# The function sample allows no duplicates.
# Result can be smaller but not larger than the input.
a = range(555)
b = random.sample(a, len(a))
print "no duplicates:", a == list(set(b))

try:
    random.sample(a, len(a) + 1)
except ValueError as e:
    print "Nope!", e

# print: no duplicates: True
# print: Nope! sample larger than population