Shuffle/Randomize A List In Python

December 2021

# Shuffle A List In Place

The basic way to shuffle a list is:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import random

list = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

random.shuffle(list)

print(list)

The list is shuffled in place and the output of the above script will be something like:

['c', 'e', 'a', 'b', 'd']

# Shuffle Items Into A New List

If you want to keep the original list in place, you can use random.sample to make a new list with the shuffled contents like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import random

original_list = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

new_list = random.sample(original_list, len(original_list))

print(original_list)
print(new_list)

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