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](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15775920/letter-guessing-game-in-python), it would be nice if you Accepted the answer here that helped you. — Henry Keiter, Apr 02 '13 at 23:06

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 02 '13 at 21:47

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()

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 02 '13 at 21:47

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.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 02 '13 at 21:47

0

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

answered Apr 02 '13 at 21:47

Falmarri

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This isn't the problem he's having; he's seeing the `'\n'` because `secretWord` is a list instead of a string. – Henry Keiter Apr 02 '13 at 21:56

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 02 '13 at 21:48

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)

python attribute error?

4 Answers4