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Python Python Basics (2015) Letter Game App Random Item

I am struggling with Code Challenge 1 after The Letter Game

I am very new to this and not sure what I am doing wrong, any help would be much appreciated. Here is the question:

You've seen how random.choice() works. It gets a random member from an iterable (like a list or a string). I want you to try and reproduce it yourself. First, import the random library. Then create a function named random_item that takes a single argument, an iterable. Then use random.randint() to get a random number between 0 and the length of the iterable, minus one. Return the iterable member that's at your random number's index. Check the file for an example.

item.py
import random

def random_item("treehouse"):
    random_number = random.randint(0, len("treehouse") - 1)
        return random_number[index]
# EXAMPLE
# random_item("Treehouse")
# The randomly selected number is 4.
# The return value would be "h"

3 Answers

Thananjaya Chakravarthy
Thananjaya Chakravarthy
4,672 Points

Brother, argument inside the function should not have quotes. It must be like.. def random_item(treehouse)

Kenneth Love
STAFF
Kenneth Love
Treehouse Guest Teacher

Function parameters, the things inside of parentheses after the function name, should be valid variable names and not strings. Then, inside your function, you'll need to use that same variable name to find the length of the string that gets passed in.

For your current example, if we fix the parameter name, you still have an issue below where you're using len(). What if the string that comes in is the word "hello"? You could get a random number higher than 4!

So no answers huh?