Question

I want to pick a random number and express that number in the format of a lottery system. For example, a lottery system has 7 groups of 2-digit numbers from 01 to 40 with the total possible combinations of 163,840,000,000 (40 to the 7th power). If I pick a random base-10 number, say 453,867,221, How can I express that in 7 groups of 2-digit numbers from 01-40?

My programming language of choice is Python, although any language/pseudo language will help.

Answer 1

So you have 40-base numbers with 7 40-base “digits”. Converting them to an integer is relatively simple (I’m using explicit loops to make things clearer):

digits = [12, 5, 39, 1, 40, 8, 17]
total = 0
for digit in digits:
    total = total * 40 + (digit-1)

Converting back is just the reverse:

total = ...
digits = []
while total > 0:
    digits = [(total % 40 + 1)] + digits
    total = total / 40