python - Add random values to multiple lists

Question

import string
import random
    
string_pool = ["W", "X", "Y", "Z"]
names = ["Ironman", "Thor", "Spiderman"]

def func1(a):
    d = []
    for b in a:
        continue
    for c in range(5):
        c += 1
        d += random.choice(string_pool)
    return print("{} : ".format(b) , d)

func1(names)

I expect the result of this code is below

Ironman : ["X", "X", "Y", "Z", "X"]
Thor : ["Y", "X", "Z", "Z", "X"]
Spiderman : ["Y", "Y", "Y", "Z", "X"]

but, the result is

Spiderman : ["Y", "Y", "Y", "Z", "X"]

only spiderman... what should i change in my code? Thank you!

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65896429/add-random-values-to-multiple-lists

Answer 1

for b in a:
        continue

Not sure what you expect this line to do.

What it actually does is execute a for loop in which nothing happens. At the beginning of each iteration of a for loop, the loop control variable (in this case b) gets assigned the value of the next element in the iterable (in this case, a.

In this case, the loop would iterate three times:

b = 'Ironman'
b = 'Thor'
b = 'Spiderman'

and since the interior of the loop is empty (just the continue statement, which means "jump back to the top of the loop immediately and go to the next iteration"), nothing happens.

Now, once the loop finishes iterating, the variable b isn't cleared or reset. The last thing assigned to it was the last element of a, which is the string 'spiderman'.

---

Did you mean to do:

for b in a:
    d = []
    for c in range(5):
        d += random.choice(string_pool)
    print("{} : ".format(b) , d)

Note how the rest of the function is inside the for loop.