Develop Reference

Conditional statement to pull out last names from a list

I have a list of full names (titled "FullNames") and I am trying to pull out the last names. The problem is that some of the full names include middle names (e.g., some of the items in the list are "Craig Nelson" while others are "Craig T. Nelson") which stops me from using a simple list comprehension statement such as:
LastNames = ([x.split()[1] for x in FullNames])
Instead, I am trying to loop through the list with this code:
LastNames = []
for item in FullNames:
if '.' in FullNames:
LastNames.appened(item[2])
else:
LastNames.append(item[1])
print(LastNames)
However, I am just getting a bunch of letters back:
['u', 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'a', 't', 'h', 'r', 'e', 'e', 'r', 'e', 'h', 'a', 'i', 't', 'a', 'r', 'a', 'i', 'e', 'o', 'e', 'e', 'a', 'r', 'o', 'a', 'y', 'i', 'e', 'e', 'o', 'o', 'e', 'e', 'a', 'i', 'i', 'e', 'm', 'a', 'a', 'a', 'n', 'e', 'a', 'r']
Is there a simple way around this?

def get_last(name):
return name.split(' ')[-1].split('.')[-1]
full_names = ["Craig T. Nelson", "Craig Nelson"]
output = list(map(get_last, full_names))
print(output)
#['Nelson', 'Nelson']

Checking For Every Letter

I am trying to make code that breaks a password that I create, at first I got it to just make random answers to the password I created and eventually I would get the right one.
But I realized that if I could change the first letter of my answer and then when I had done all of the letters, change the second letter.
Ex: AA AB AC ... AY AZ BA BB BC.
I understand that I could make a loop to print every single letter, but how would I be able to change the first letter after I have gone through every letter.
I also need this to be able to break a password of any length so the loop would have to be able to change how many letters I need. I also need to get rid of the brackets and quotes in the output.
lower_upper_alphabet = ['a','b','c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z']
while done == 0:
for i in range (int(passwordlen)):
for i in range(52):
for i in range(len(lower_upper_alphabet)):
characters2 = []
characters2.append(str(lower_upper_alphabet[next1]))
next1 += 1
print(characters2)
Output:
["A"]
["B"]
["C"]
["D"]
["E"]
["F"]
["G"]
["H"]
["I"]
["J"]
["K"]
["L"]
["M"]
["N"]
["O"]
["P"]
["Q"]
["R"]
["S"]
["T"]
["U"]
["V"]
["W"]
["X"]
["Y"]
["Z"]

Printing a list from a random sample using join()

I am trying to print a python list using join after it has randomly selected a specified amount of characters. What I want is for it to print all characters beside each other instead of printing each character on a separate line. Everything works fine up until my for statement, if I print out password_letters it will print (on separate lines) the specified amount based on nr_letters. All I want is to join/concatenate the specified letters onto one line. I have followed the documentation on here and some on google, but I still can't find where I have gone wrong.
Please help me find where I have gone wrong in the below code:
import random
letters = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z']
nr_letters= int(input("How many letters would you like in your password?\n"))
password_letters = random.sample(letters, nr_letters )
for letter in password_letters:
print("".join(letter))

No need for a loop, just join the list.
print("".join(password_letters))

Python script to generate a word with specific structure and letter combinations

I want to write a really short script that will help me generate a random/nonsense word with the following qualities:
-Has 8 letters
-First letter is "A"
-Second and Fourth letters are random letters
-Fifth letter is a vowel
-Sixth and Seventh letters are random letters and are the same
-Eighth letter is a vowel that's not "a"
This is what I have tried so far (using all the info I could find and understand online)
firsts = 'A'
seconds = ['a','b','c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
thirds = ['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'y']
fourths = ['a','b','c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
fifths = ['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'y']
sixths = sevenths = ['a','b','c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
eighths = ['e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'y']
print [''.join(first, second, third, fourth, fifth)
for first in firsts
for second in seconds
for third in thirds
for fourth in fourths
for fifth in fifths
for sixth in sixths
for seventh in sevenths
for eighth in eighths]
However it keeps showing a SyntaxError: invalid syntax after the for and now I have absolutely no idea how to make this work. If possible please look into this for me, thank you so much!

So the magic function you need to know about to pick a random letter is random.choice. You can pass a list into this function and it will give you a random element from that list. It also works with strings because strings are basically a list of chars. Also to make your life easier, use string module. string.ascii_lowercase returns all the letters from a to z in a string so you don't have to type it out. Lastly, you don't use loops to join strings together. Keep it simple. You can just add them together.
import string
from random import choice
first = 'A'
second = choice(string.ascii_lowercase)
third = choice(string.ascii_lowercase)
fourth = choice(string.ascii_lowercase)
fifth = choice("aeiou")
sixthSeventh = choice(string.ascii_lowercase)
eighth = choice("eiou")
word = first + second + third + fourth + fifth + sixthSeventh + sixthSeventh + eighth
print(word)

Try this:
import random
sixth=random.choice(sixths)
s='A'+random.choice(seconds)+random.choice(thirds)+random.choice(fourths)+random.choice(fifths)+sixth+sixth+random.choice(eighths)
print(s)
Output:
Awixonno
Ahiwojjy
etc

There are several things to consider. First, the str.join() method takes in an iterable (e.g. a list), not a bunch of individual elements. Doing
''.join([first, second, third, fourth, fifth])
fixes the program in this respect. If you are using Python 3, print() is a function, and so you should add parentheses around the entire list comprehension.
With the syntax out of the way, let's get to a more interesting problem: Your program constructs every (82255680 !) possible word. This takes a long time and memory. What you want is probably to just pick one. You can of course do this by first constructing all, then picking one at random. It's far cheaper though to pick one letter from each of firsts, seconds, etc. at random and then collecting these. All together then:
import random
firsts = ['A']
seconds = ['a','b','c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
thirds = ['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'y']
fourths = ['a','b','c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
fifths = ['a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'y']
sixths = sevenths = ['a','b','c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
eighths = ['e', 'i', 'o', 'u', 'y']
result = ''.join([
random.choice(firsts),
random.choice(seconds),
random.choice(thirds),
random.choice(fourths),
random.choice(fifths),
random.choice(sixths),
random.choice(sevenths),
random.choice(eighths),
])
print(result)
To improve the code from here, try to:
Find a way to generate the "data" in a neater way than writing it out explicitly. As an example:
import string
seconds = list(string.ascii_lowercase) # you don't even need list()!
Instead of having a separate variable firsts, seconds, etc., collect these into a single variable, e.g. a single list containing each original list as a single str with all characters included.

This will implement what you describe. You can make the code neater by putting the choices into an overall list rather than have several different variables, but you will have to explicitly deal with the fact that the sixth and seventh letters are the same; they will not be guaranteed to be the same simply because there are the same choices available for each of them.
The list choices_list could contain sub-lists per your original code, but as you are choosing single characters it will work equally with strings when using random.choice and this also makes the code a bit neater.
import random
choices_list = [
'A',
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',
'aeiouy',
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',
'aeiouy',
'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',
'eiouy'
]
letters = [random.choice(choices) for choices in choices_list]
word = ''.join(letters[:6] + letters[5:]) # here the 6th letter gets repeated
print(word)
Some example outputs:
Alaeovve
Aievellu
Ategiwwo
Aeuzykko

Here's the syntax fix:
print(["".join([first, second, third])
for first in firsts
for second in seconds
for third in thirds])
This method might take up a lot of memory.

Nested For loop in python?

def validateName(name):
continueP = "Yes"
alpha = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z'
'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z']
while continueP=="Yes":
for alphaCheck in alpha:
letter = alphaCheck
for a in name:
if a != letter:
print("Please enter a valid name")
print("You have entered a valid name")
continueP = input("Do you want to continue, input Yes to continue, input No to Exit: ")
name = input("Please input a valid name, a valid name is only with characters A-Z: ")
name = input("Please input a valid name, a valid name is only with characters A-Z: ")
validateName(name)
So basically what I'm trying to do is evaluate each character in my list to each character in a string someone would input. If a character that's not suppose to be in there is found it's suppose to tell me so. I'm pretty new to python so please keep that in mind. What follows is consecutive "Please enter a valid name" outputs. But if you evaluate a string like "Name" you can clearly see that the characters in that string match the characters in my list. Am I overlooking something? Because It looks like it should work to me. Any help or advice would be appreciated.
I don't understand why this isn't a valid question? I demonstrated what I tried and what I'm having trouble with.

There are some problems in your code:
Use raw_input() instead of input() for user input. As input() will execute eval(raw_input())
When using a while loop like while continueP == "Yes": The continueP variable will actually only be validated at the beginning of the loop. Thus I would prefer while True: with a break statement for better control.
The order of validating/reprompt in the while loop is messed up
This works for me:
alpha = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z'
'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H', 'I', 'J', 'K', 'L', 'M', 'N', 'O', 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', 'T', 'U', 'V', 'W', 'X', 'Y', 'Z']
def validateName(name):
while True:
if [i for i in name if i not in alpha]:
continueP = raw_input("Do you want to continue, input Yes to continue, input No to Exit: ")
if not continueP == "Yes":
exit(1)
else:
name = raw_input("Please input a valid name, a valid name is only with characters A-Z: ")
continue
break
print("You have entered a valid name")
name = raw_input("Please input a valid name, a valid name is only with characters A-Z: ")
validateName(name)