how to assign a word from a text file to a variable in python

Question

I have a text file and I need to assign a random word from this text file (each word is on a separate line) to a variable in Python. Then I need to remove this word from the text file.

This is what I have so far.

with open("words.txt") as f:    #Open the text file
    wordlist = [x.rstrip() for x in f]
variable = random.sample(wordlist,1)     #Assigning the random word
print(variable)

Answer 1

Use random.choice to pick a single word:

variable = random.choice(wordlist)

You can then remove it from the word list by another comprehension:

new_wordlist = [word for word in wordlist if word != variable]

(You can also use filter for this part)

You can then save that word list to a file by using:

with open("words.txt", 'w') as f:    # Open file for writing
    f.write('\n'.join(new_wordlist))

If you want to remove just a single instance of the word you should choose an index to use. See this answer.

Answer 2

If you need to handle duplicates, and it's not acceptable to reshuffle the list every time, there's a simple solution: Instead of just randomly picking a word, randomly pick an index. Like this:

index = random.randrange(len(wordlist))
word = wordlist.pop(index)
with open("words.txt", 'w') as f:
    f.write('\n'.join(new_wordlist))

Or, alternatively, use enumerate to pick both at once:

word, index = random.choice(enumerate(wordlist))
del wordlist[index]
with open("words.txt", 'w') as f:
    f.write('\n'.join(new_wordlist))

Answer 3

Rather than random.choice as Reut suggested, I would do this because it keeps duplicates:

random.shuffle(wordlist) # shuffle the word list 
theword = wordlist.pop() # pop the first element