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Andrew McLane
3,385 PointsRandom_item not defined
getting error random_item not defined.
# EXAMPLE
# random_item("Treehouse")
# The randomly selected number is 4.
# The return value would be "h"
import random
def random_item(iterable):
return iterable.index(random.randint(0,len(iterable))-1)
1 Answer
Jennifer Nordell
Treehouse TeacherHi there! It is, but I believe that your code is raising an exception. You're using the index method here, but that's not returning what you think it is. The index method is looking for an object inside an iterable and the object it's looking for is the random number that you've created. But if it can't find that number inside the iterable then an exception will be raised. You can find documentation on the index method for string here but other data types also have index methods.
The challenge wants you to get whatever object is at that index instead of getting the index of the *object. Remember, if we want to get the first item from an iterable, we can use the subscript notation like this:
my_string = "Hello"
my_letter = my_string[0]
At this point, my_letter would equal "H" as it is the letter at the 0 index. If we wanted to find the index of "H" we would do this:
my_index = my_string.index("H")
This would return a 0 and assign it to my_index as 0 is the index where "H" first occurs.
Hope this helps!
