python是否有更好的方法来拆分字符串而不是转换为列表？

Question

I am testing a set of web apis, using python, a language I am still in the process of learning. I am taking in a string, the name of a dealer, and chopping off the end after a random number of characters. I am then adding a character (wild card) to then end of the string. That modified string is then passed to an api that searches for the name of a dealer, and can include wild cards. I have the code below, but it seems long. Is there a cleaner looking, or more pythonic way of approaching this problem? Potentially a way to do this without converting from a string, to a list, back to a string?

split_name = list(name)     #turns name string into list
rand = random.randint(6,(len(split_name)-1))    #generates random number
split_name[rand:len(split_name)] = []       #breaks of end part of name list
srch_name = ''.join(split_name)     #stringifies list
#Send request
rqst = requests.get(name_srch %(key, (srch_name + '*'))) #this adds * and sends the request

Name is earlier defined in the script to be some string, such as "Dave and Bills equipment sales and service, INC" I should note I am using python 2.7

Answer 1

Yes, use slicing to pick a random number of characters from the string, no need to split it into a list first:

rand = random.randint(6, len(split_name) - 1)
search_name = name[rand:] + '*'
rqst = requests.get(name_srch % (key, search_name))

Strings are sequences too and support slicing directly without needing to turn it into a list first. You can omit the end-point, slicing defaults to the end of the string in that case.