[Tutor] Cards Program

[Danny Yoo]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Timothy M. Brauch wrote:

> As it is right now, I can get the program to deal as many cards as I
> want, but I cannot think of a way to get the cards into seperate hands,
> other than just having the program deal out the cards and then manually
> split these cards up into hands myself.  That is not what I am looking
> for.  Here is my code so far:

> values=['2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','10','Jack','Queen','King','Ace']
> suits=['Hearts','Spades','Diamonds','Clubs']
> 
> def card():
>     value=random.randint(0,12)
>     suit=random.randint(0,3)
>     return [suit,value]
>     
> while (c<cards):
>     new_card=card()
>     if new_card not in dealt:
>         dealt.append(new_card)
>         c=c+1
>     else: pass


Although this will work, there's another way to approach this problem.  We
can construct the whole deck as a list of [value/suit] pairs:

###
def makeDeck():
    values=['2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','10',
            'Jack','Queen','King','Ace']
    suits=['Hearts','Spades','Diamonds','Clubs']

    deck = []
    for v in values:                
        for s in suits:              
            deck.append([v, s])
    return deck
###

Let's see how this will work:

###
>>> makeDeck()
[['2', 'Hearts'], ['2', 'Spades'], ['2', 'Diamonds'], ['2', 'Clubs'],
['3', 'Hearts'], ['3', 'Spades'], ['3', 'Diamonds'], ['3', 'Clubs'],
# [... lots and lots of cards.]

>>> len(makeDeck())
52
###

So that sounds like the right number of cards.  Then all we'd need to do
to draw new cards is to pull out a random card from the deck with
random.choice().

###
>>> deck = makeDeck()
>>> random.choice(deck)
['3', 'Spades']
>>> random.choice(deck)
['8', 'Hearts']
>>> random.choice(deck)
['King', 'Clubs']
###

(Note: the above might be buggy because it's as if we take a random card
from the deck, but then put it right back into the deck.  We need to
actually _pull_ our choice out of the deck; otherwise, we'll hit
duplicates.)

So this might lead to an easier way of generating hands, and you even get
a fully contructed deck too.

Good luck!