Generate a random letter in Python

Question:

Is there a way to generate random letters in Python (like random.randint but for letters)? The range functionality of random.randint would be nice but having a generator that just outputs a random letter would be better than nothing.

Asked By: Kudu

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Answers:

Simple:

>>> import string
>>> string.ascii_letters
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
>>> import random
>>> random.choice(string.ascii_letters)
'j'

string.ascii_letters returns a string containing the lower case and upper case letters according to the current locale.

random.choice returns a single, random element from a sequence.

Answered By: Mark Rushakoff
>>> import random
>>> import string
>>> random.choice(string.ascii_letters)
'g'
Answered By: joaquin

Another way, for completeness:

>>> chr(random.randrange(97, 97 + 26))

Use the fact that ascii ‘a’ is 97, and there are 26 letters in the alphabet.

When determining the upper and lower bound of the random.randrange() function call, remember that random.randrange() is exclusive on its upper bound, meaning it will only ever generate an integer up to 1 unit less that the provided value.

Answered By: rlotun
>>> import random
>>> import string    
>>> random.choice(string.ascii_lowercase)
'b'
Answered By: Taylor Leese
def randchar(a, b):
    return chr(random.randint(ord(a), ord(b)))
Answered By: Florian Diesch

Maybe this can help you:

import random
for a in range(64,90):
    h = random.randint(64, a)
    e += chr(h)
print e
Answered By: peter
>>>def random_char(y):
       return ''.join(random.choice(string.ascii_letters) for x in range(y))

>>>print (random_char(5))
>>>fxkea

to generate y number of random characters

Answered By: Saad

Place a python on the keyboard and let him roll over the letters until you find your preferd random combo Just kidding!

import string #This was a design above but failed to print. I remodled it.
import random
irandom = random.choice(string.ascii_letters) 
print irandom
import string
import random

KEY_LEN = 20

def base_str():
    return (string.letters+string.digits)   
def key_gen():
    keylist = [random.choice(base_str()) for i in range(KEY_LEN)]
    return ("".join(keylist))

You can get random strings like this:

g9CtUljUWD9wtk1z07iF
ndPbI1DDn6UvHSQoDMtd
klMFY3pTYNVWsNJ6cs34
Qgr7OEalfhXllcFDGh2l
Answered By: 王孝先
import random
def guess_letter():
    return random.choice('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz')
Answered By: Toby

You can just make a list:

import random
list1=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h']
b=random.randint(0,7)
print(list1[b])
Answered By: andrewJ

You can use this to get one or more random letter(s)

import random
import string
random.seed(10)
letters = string.ascii_lowercase
rand_letters = random.choices(letters,k=5) # where k is the number of required rand_letters

print(rand_letters)

['o', 'l', 'p', 'f', 'v']
Answered By: mallet

well, this is my answer! It works well. Just put the number of random letters you want in ‘number’… (Python 3)

import random

def key_gen():
    keylist = random.choice('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz')
    return keylist

number = 0
list_item = ''
while number < 20:
    number = number + 1
    list_item = list_item + key_gen()

print(list_item)
Answered By: David W. Beck
import string
import random

def random_char(y):
    return ''.join(random.choice(string.ascii_letters+string.digits+li) for x in range(y))
no=int(input("Enter the number of character for your password=  "))
li = random.choice('!@#$%^*&( )_+}{')
print(random_char(no)+li)
Answered By: Jack Honor
def create_key(key_len):
    key = ''
    valid_characters_list = string.letters + string.digits
    for i in range(key_len):
        character = choice(valid_characters_list)
        key = key + character
    return key

def create_key_list(key_num):
    keys = []
    for i in range(key_num):
        key = create_key(key_len)
        if key not in keys:
            keys.append(key)
    return keys
Answered By: user9739613

All previous answers are correct, if you are looking for random characters of various types (i.e. alphanumeric and special characters) then here is an script that I created to demonstrate various types of creating random functions, it has three functions one for numbers, alpha- characters and special characters. The script simply generates passwords and is just an example to demonstrate various ways of generating random characters.

import string
import random
import sys

#make sure it's 3.7 or above
print(sys.version)

def create_str(str_length):
    return random.sample(string.ascii_letters, str_length)

def create_num(num_length):
    digits = []
    for i in range(num_length):
        digits.append(str(random.randint(1, 100)))

    return digits

def create_special_chars(special_length):
    stringSpecial = []
    for i in range(special_length):
        stringSpecial.append(random.choice('!$%&()*+,-.:;<=>?@[]^_`{|}~'))

    return stringSpecial

print("how many characters would you like to use ? (DO NOT USE LESS THAN 8)")
str_cnt = input()
print("how many digits would you like to use ? (DO NOT USE LESS THAN 2)")
num_cnt = input()
print("how many special characters would you like to use ? (DO NOT USE LESS THAN 1)")
s_chars_cnt = input()
password_values = create_str(int(str_cnt)) +create_num(int(num_cnt)) + create_special_chars(int(s_chars_cnt))

#shuffle/mix the values
random.shuffle(password_values)

print("generated password is: ")
print(''.join(password_values))

Result:

enter image description here

Answered By: grepit

My overly complicated piece of code:

import random

letter = (random.randint(1,26))
if letter == 1:
   print ('a')
elif letter == 2:
    print ('b')
elif letter == 3:
    print ('c')
elif letter == 4:
    print ('d')
elif letter == 5:
    print ('e')
elif letter == 6:
    print ('f')
elif letter == 7:
    print ('g')
elif letter == 8:
    print ('h')
elif letter == 9:
    print ('i')
elif letter == 10:
    print ('j')
elif letter == 11:
    print ('k')
elif letter == 12:
    print ('l')
elif letter == 13:
    print ('m')
elif letter == 14:
    print ('n')
elif letter == 15:
    print ('o')
elif letter == 16:
    print ('p')
elif letter == 17:
    print ('q')
elif letter == 18:
    print ('r')
elif letter == 19:
    print ('s')
elif letter == 20:
    print ('t')
elif letter == 21:
    print ('u')
elif letter == 22:
    print ('v')
elif letter == 23:
    print ('w')
elif letter == 24:
    print ('x')
elif letter == 25:
    print ('y')
elif letter == 26:
    print ('z')

It basically generates a random number out of 26 and then converts into its corresponding letter. This could defiantly be improved but I am only a beginner and I am proud of this piece of code.

Answered By: Nit Nurray

You can use

map(lambda a : chr(a),  np.random.randint(low=65, high=90, size=4))
Answered By: Ankit Agrawal
import random
def Random_Alpha():
    l = ['A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J','K','L','M','N','O','P','Q','R','S','T','U','V','W','X','Y','Z']
    return l[random.randint(0,25)]

print(Random_Alpha())
Answered By: Vaibhav Pthak

A summary and improvement of some of the answers.

import numpy as np
n = 5
[chr(i) for i in np.random.randint(ord('a'), ord('z') + 1, n)]
# ['b', 'f', 'r', 'w', 't']
Answered By: nocibambi
#*A handy python password generator*

here is the output

 import random
    letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z']
    numbers = ['0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9']
    symbols = ['!', '#', '$', '%', '&', '(', ')', '*', '+']
        
    print("Welcome to the Python Password Generator!")
    l= int(input("How many letters would you like in your password?n")) 
    s = int(input(f"How many symbols would you like?n"))
    n = int(input(f"How many numbers would you like?n"))
        
    sequence = random.sample(letters,l)
    num      = random.sample(numbers,n)
    sym      = random.sample(symbols,s)
    sequence.extend(num)
    sequence.extend(sym)
         
    random.shuffle(sequence)
    password = ''.join([str(elem) for elem in sequence])#listToStr 
    print(password)
Answered By: Ishu

This doesn’t use any fancy modules but works fine:

    ''.join(chr(random.randrange(65,90)) for i in range(10))
Answered By: momo la débrouill

And another, if you pefer numpy over random:

import numpy as np
import string
np.random.choice(list(string.ascii_letters))
Answered By: JohnRos
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