Question

In Python, I open a text file and read it line-by-line, and strip() the line before evaluating it.
When I evaluate the line, I have an if statement to check if the line is “random”, and then puts a random number into a variable called genRandom. I have another line in my code that looks like this:

thisLine.replace("genRANDOM",genRandom) #Replace genRANDOM with the random number

On every line, it seems to work ok. In the input text file, I have a line that looks like this:

-genRANDOM

Whenever my script evaluates that line, I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Mass Storage\pythonscripts\TurnByTurn\execute.py", line 37, in <module>
    thisLine.replace("genRANDOM",genRandom) #Replace genRANDOM with the random number
TypeError: expected a character buffer object

How can I fix this? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You’re telling thisLine.replace to replace the string "genRANDOM" with the number genRandom. That doesn’t work, because it “expects a character buffer object” (such as a string), not a number.

Try str(genRandom) instead, to turn it into a string: "4" instead of 4.

Also, you might want to name the variable something else; genRandom sounds like a function that generates a random number to me, not a random number that’s been generated.