Answer in one line:
''.join(random.choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits) for _ in range(N))
or even shorter starting with Python 3.6 using random.choices()
:
''.join(random.choices(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits, k=N))
A cryptographically more secure version: see this post
''.join(random.SystemRandom().choice(string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits) for _ in range(N))
In details, with a clean function for further reuse:
>>> import string
>>> import random
>>> def id_generator(size=6, chars=string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits):
... return ''.join(random.choice(chars) for _ in range(size))
...
>>> id_generator()
'G5G74W'
>>> id_generator(3, "6793YUIO")
'Y3U'
How does it work ?
We import string
, a module that contains sequences of common ASCII characters, and random
, a module that deals with random generation.
string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits
just concatenates the list of characters representing uppercase ASCII chars and digits:
>>> string.ascii_uppercase
'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
>>> string.digits
'0123456789'
>>> string.ascii_uppercase + string.digits
'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789'
Then we use a list comprehension to create a list of 'n' elements:
>>> range(4) # range create a list of 'n' numbers
[0, 1, 2, 3]
>>> ['elem' for _ in range(4)] # we use range to create 4 times 'elem'
['elem', 'elem', 'elem', 'elem']
In the example above, we use [
to create the list, but we don't in the id_generator
function so Python doesn't create the list in memory, but generates the elements on the fly, one by one (more about this here).
Instead of asking to create 'n' times the string elem
, we will ask Python to create 'n' times a random character, picked from a sequence of characters:
>>> random.choice("abcde")
'a'
>>> random.choice("abcde")
'd'
>>> random.choice("abcde")
'b'
Therefore random.choice(chars) for _ in range(size)
really is creating a sequence of size
characters. Characters that are randomly picked from chars
:
>>> [random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3)]
['a', 'b', 'b']
>>> [random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3)]
['e', 'b', 'e']
>>> [random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3)]
['d', 'a', 'c']
Then we just join them with an empty string so the sequence becomes a string:
>>> ''.join(['a', 'b', 'b'])
'abb'
>>> [random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3)]
['d', 'c', 'b']
>>> ''.join(random.choice('abcde') for _ in range(3))
'dac'
JSON does not allow real line-breaks. You need to replace all the line breaks with \n
.
eg:
"first line
second line"
can saved with:
"first line\nsecond line"
Note:
for Python
, this should be written as:
"first line\\nsecond line"
where \\
is for escaping the backslash, otherwise python will treat \n
as
the control character "new line"
Best Answer
As groovy doesn't have EOL marker (such as
;
) it gets confused if you put the operator on the following lineThis would work instead:
as the Groovy parser knows to expect something on the following line
Groovy sees your original
def
as three separate statements. The first assignstest
toa
, the second two try to make"test"
positive (and this is where it fails)With the
new String
constructor method, the Groovy parser is still in the constructor (as the brace hasn't yet closed), so it can logically join the three lines together into a single statementFor true multi-line Strings, you can also use the triple quote:
Will create a String with test on three lines
Also, you can make it neater by:
the
stripMargin
method will trim the left (up to and including the|
char) from each line