Question

Disclaimer: This may be a terribly simple question but I’m attempting to learn Python.

Essentially, I have a list of classes and given a random number, I’d like to construct a new instance of the class indexed at that random number.

  #The members of the list below are class objects  
  SHAPES = [I_shape, J_shape, L_shape, O_shape, S_shape, T_shape, Z_shape]

I’ve discovered how to do it given a string so I guess I could just use the name attribute of the class but I’m curious if there isn’t an easier way to go about this.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Given your SHAPES array, you can simply call the class object:

new_obj = random.choice(SHAPES)()

The random.choice(SHAPES) picks one of your I_shape, J_shape, etc, and the final () calls the constructor for that class object, just as if you had written I_shape() or whatever.