Question

This snippet of code was supposed to generate a random number which represents a question. The number generator generates numbers from 1 through 10. But if the number is not in the list of numbers "numlist" it is supposed to generate another number. This is supposed to make it so that the program won’t ask the same question twice. using numlist.remove() did not work for this purpose. What will work? Or, what is a better method.

Also, I want to know how to make it so that there is less repetition in the code (loop?).

def roll():
    var = random.randint(1,10)
    if var not in numlist:
        roll()

    elif var == 1:
        numlist.remove(1)
        q1()
    elif var == 2:
        numlist.remove(2)
        q2()
    elif var == 3:
        numlist.remove(3)
        q3()
    elif var == 4:
        numlist.remove(4)
        q4()
    elif var == 5:
        numlist.remove(5)
        q5()
    elif var ==6:
        numlist.remove(6)
        q6()
    elif var == 7:
        numlist.remove(7)
        q7()
    elif var == 8:
        numlist.remove(8)
        q8()
    elif var == 9:
        numlist.remove(9)
        q9()
    elif var == 10:
        numlist.remove(10)
        q10()

Answer 1

Keeping one function per question is not a good strategy. What if you want to change slightly how questions, hints and answers are given? You’re going to change dozens or even hundreds of functions?

A much better approach is an object-oriented one- for example, where each question is an object of the Question class. For example:

class Question:
    def __init__(self, question, hints, answer):
        self.question = question
        self.hints = hints
        self.answer = answer

    def ask_question(self):
        print "Here is your question:"
        print self.question

    def give_hint(self):
        if len(self.hints) == 0:
            print "That's all the hints I have!"
        else:
            print self.hints.pop(0)

     def guess(self, guess):
        if guess == self.answer:
            print "You guessed correctly!"
        else:
            print "No, try again!"

Any behavior that you originally encapsulated in the question function (limiting the number of guesses, limited amount of time, displaying in a certain format, whatever) would all be handled by methods of the Question class. In the meantime, all the information specific to one question would be held in the data members (in this case question, hints and answers, although there could be other variables) that are specific to that question.

You would create a question like this:

q1 = Question("How many roads must a man walk down?", ["Think Douglas Adams.", "It's more than 40 and less than 50"], "42")

Or better yet, create them from a tab delimited file, where the file is something like:

How many roads must a man walk down?    Think Douglas Adams./It's more than 40 and less than 50    42

And they are created like:

questions = []
with open("questions.txt") as inf:
    for l in inf:
        question, hints, answer = l[:-1].split("\t")
        questions.append(Question(question, hints.split("/"), answer))

Then your main function would call methods of the Question, which encapsulate its question-asking behavior. This would keep you from ever having to repeat code (all the code exists only in one place: the methods of the Question object) and would keep all your questions in a flexible format.