Getting random element from a csv file

Question

I have a Csv file containing many words. I want to write a python3 code that get a word from this file randomly. Since object returned fromcsv.reader(file) has no length parameter and isn't indexed, I have no idea how to get a word by random.

spamReader = csv.reader(open('A3_words.csv', 'r'))
# something like:
# rnd = random.randrange(reader.length)
# word = reader[rnd]

I would appriciate any help.

EDIT:

Every word is in a separated line like this:

when  
what  
make  
time

Deelaka · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-01 10:00:57Z

4

This code would produce a random string from the sample you've provided

import csv
import random

spamReader = csv.reader(open('A3_words.csv', 'r'))

data = sum([i for i in spamReader],[]) #To flatten the list
print(random.choice(data))

edited Dec 1, 2013 at 10:00

answered Dec 1, 2013 at 9:54

Deelaka

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4 Comments

Alireza Farahani Over a year ago

Oo I'm sorry. I will edit the question. Thanks for your reply.

Alireza Farahani Over a year ago

Since my csv file is small, there isn't much overhead reading whole file, but is there any way getting one element without reading it all?

Alireza Farahani Over a year ago

I'm sorry for delay in approving and upvoting. Your answer worked well. Thank you.

Deelaka Over a year ago

@alireza thanks, BTW you cannot prevent it from reading the whole csv file.... however your code can be optimized but that's out of scope....

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