random choice from dictionary

[MRAB]

On 2018-12-23 19:52, Avi Gross wrote:
> There are quite a few places the new pythonic way of doing things requires
> extra steps to get an iterator to expand into a list so Abdul-Rahmann
> probably is right that there is no easy way to get a random key from a
> standard dictionary. Other than the expected answers to make a customized
> dictionary or function that provides the functionality at the expense for
> potentially generating a huge list of keys in memory, I offer the following
> as an alternative for large dictionaries and especially if they have large
> keys.
> 
> The following is a function that iterates over the dictionary one key at a
> time and when it reaches a random one, it returns the key without further
> evaluation. On the average, it takes N/2 iterations for N keys. Asking to
> make a list(data) may be efficient in terms of time and indexing is fast but
> space is used maximally unless it just points to existing storage.
> 
> Here is one way to do the function. Some might use an emum instead.
> 
> def rand_key(data):
>      """Get a random key from a dict without using all of memory."""
>      import random
>      randy = random.randrange(len(data))
>      this = 0
>      for key in data:
>          if (this == randy):
>              return(key)
>          this += 1
> 
[snip]
You might as well use 'enumerate' there:

def rand_key(data):
     """Get a random key from a dict without using all of memory."""
     import random
     randy = random.randrange(len(data))
     for this, key in enumerate(data):
         if this == randy:
             return key

Or you could use 'islice':

def rand_key(data):
     """Get a random key from a dict without using all of memory."""
     import itertools
     import random
     randy = random.randrange(len(data))
     return list(itertools.islice(data, randy, randy + 1))[0]