python attribute error?

Question

I'm working on a simple python game in which the player attempts to guess letters contained in a word. The problem is, when I print a word, it's printing the \n at the end.

It looks like I need to use .strip to remove it. However, when I use it as seen in the following code, I get an attribute error saying that the list object has no attribute "strip".

Sorry for the newbie question.

import random
with open('wordlist.txt') as wordList:
    secretWord = random.sample(wordList.readlines(), 1).strip()

print (secretWord)

Seeing as you've solved this problem, it would be nice if you Accepted the answer here that helped you. — Henry Keiter
– Henry Keiter, Commented Apr 2, 2013 at 23:06

Henry Keiter · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-02 21:47:17Z

1

Well, that's because lists don't have an attribute named strip. If you try print secretWord you'll notice that it's a list (of length 1), not a string. You need to access the string contained in that list, rather than the list itself.

secretWord = random.sample(wordList.readlines(), 1)[0].strip()

Of course, this would be much easier/cleaner if you used choice instead of sample, since you're only grabbing one word:

secretWord = random.choice(wordList.readlines()).strip()

answered Apr 2, 2013 at 21:47

Henry Keiter

17.3k8 gold badges53 silver badges85 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

Rafe Kettler · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-02 21:47:27Z

0

Right. Strings in Python are not lists -- you have to convert between the two (though they often behave similarly).

If you'd like to turn a list of string into a string, you can join on the empty string:

x = ''.join(list_of_strings)

x is now a string. You'll have to do something similar to get from what you got out of random.sample (a list) to a string.

answered Apr 2, 2013 at 21:47

Rafe Kettler

77.1k21 gold badges160 silver badges151 bronze badges

Comments

Falmarri · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-02 21:47:37Z

0

print adds a newline. You need to use something lower level, like os.write

answered Apr 2, 2013 at 21:47

Falmarri

48.7k43 gold badges158 silver badges196 bronze badges

1 Comment

Henry Keiter Over a year ago

This isn't the problem he's having; he's seeing the '\n' because secretWord is a list instead of a string.

Andrew Clark · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-02 21:48:58Z

0

random.sample() will return a list, it looks like you are trying to randomly select a single element from the list so you should use random.choice() instead:

import random
with open('wordlist.txt') as wordList:
    secretWord = random.choice(wordList.readlines()).strip()

print (secretWord)

answered Apr 2, 2013 at 21:48

Andrew Clark

210k36 gold badges285 silver badges310 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

python attribute error?

4 Answers 4

Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

4 Answers 4

Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related