Re: Random string of digits?

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Date	Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:54:40 +1100
Subject	Re: Random string of digits?
From	Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 12:48 AM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:30:46 -0500, Roy Smith wrote:
>
>> I want to create a string of 20 random digits (I'm OK with leading
>> zeros).  The best I came up with is:
>>
>> ''.join(str(random.randint(0, 9)) for i in range(20))
>>
>> Is there something better?
>
> '%20d' % random.randint(0, 10**20-1)

I should mention that this sort of thing is absolutely acceptable in
situations where you don't actually need that level of randomness; if
you want to assign 20-digit numbers to each of ten million objects,
you can happily use something that's only really random to fifteen. I
use this technique with base 36 numbers to generate arbitrary
alphanumeric strings to use as message tags, for instance; fill out a
specified field size, even though not every combination will actually
be used.

ChrisA

Thread

Random string of digits? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2011-12-25 08:30 -0500
  Re: Random string of digits? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-12-25 13:48 +0000
    Re: Random string of digits? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-26 00:54 +1100
      Re: Random string of digits? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-12-25 15:46 +0000
        Re: Random string of digits? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-26 03:11 +1100
          Re: Random string of digits? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-12-25 17:18 +0000
            Re: Random string of digits? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2011-12-25 12:41 -0500
              Re: Random string of digits? 88888 Dihedral <dihedral88888@googlemail.com> - 2011-12-25 11:50 -0800
              Re: Random string of digits? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-12-26 03:00 +0000
                Re: Random string of digits? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-26 14:43 +1100
                Re: Random string of digits? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2011-12-25 23:17 -0500
                Re: Random string of digits? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-26 15:26 +1100
    Re: Random string of digits? Serhiy Storchaka <storchaka@gmail.com> - 2011-12-25 19:32 +0200
  Re: Random string of digits? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-26 00:50 +1100
    Re: Random string of digits? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2011-12-25 09:21 -0500
      Re: Random string of digits? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-26 01:51 +1100
        Re: Random string of digits? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2011-12-25 15:27 +0000
  Re: Random string of digits? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2011-12-26 00:51 +1100
  Re: Random string of digits? Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2011-12-25 16:21 +0100

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