How to get random slice of python list of constant size. (smallest code)

Question

Hi I have a List say 100 items, now i want a slice of say 6 items which should be randomly selected. Any way to do it in very simple simple concise statement???

This is what i came up with (but it will fetch in sequence)

 mylist #100 items
 N=100
 L=6
 start=random.randint(0,N-L);
 mylist[start:start+L]

Answer 1

You could use the shuffle() method on the list before you slice.

If the order of the list matters, just make a copy of it first and slice out of the copy.

---

mylist #100 items
shuffleList = mylist
L=6
shuffle(shuffleList) 
start=random.randint(0,len(shuffleList)-L);
shuffleList[start:start+L]

As above, you could also use len() instead of defining the length of the list.

As THC4K suggested below, you could use the random.sample() method like below IF you want a set of random numbers from the list (which is how I read your question).

mylist #100 items
L=6
random.sample(mylist, L)

That's a lot tidier than my first try at it!