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Cannot understand how this Python code works

I found this question on HackerRank and I am unable to understand the code(solution) that is displayed in the discussions page.
The question is:
Consider a list (list = []). You can perform the following commands:
insert i e: Insert integer at position .
print: Print the list.
remove e: Delete the first occurrence of integer .
append e: Insert integer at the end of the list.
sort: Sort the list.
pop: Pop the last element from the list.
reverse: Reverse the list.
Even though I have solved the problem using if-else, I do not understand how this code works:
n = input()
slist = []
for _ in range(n):
s = input().split()
cmd = s[0]
args = s[1:]
if cmd !="print":
cmd += "("+ ",".join(args) +")"
eval("slist."+cmd)
else:
print slist

Well, the code takes advantage of Python's eval function. Many languages have this feature: eval, short for "evaluate", takes a piece of text and executes it as if it were part of the program instead of just a piece of data fed to the program. This line:
s = input().split()
reads a line of input from the user and splits it into words based on whitespace, so if you type "insert 1 2", s is set to the list ["insert","1","2"]. That is then transformed by the following lines into "insert(1,2)", which is then appended to "slist." and passed to eval, resulting in the method call slist.insert(1,2) being executed. So basically, this code is taking advantage of the fact that Python already has methods to perform the required functions, that even happen to have the same names used in the problem. All it has to do is take the name and arguments from an input line and transform them into Python syntax. (The print option is special-cased since there is no method slist.print(); for that case it uses the global command: print slist.)
In real-world code, you should almost never use eval; it is a very dangerous feature, since it allows users of your application to potentially cause it to run any code they want. It's certainly one of the easier features for hackers to use to break into things.

It's dirty code that's abusing eval.
Basically, when you enter, for example, "remove 1", it creates some code that looks like sList.remove(1), then gives the created code to eval. This has Python interpret it.
This is probably the worst way you could solve this outside of coding competitions though. The use of eval is entirely unnecessary here.

Actually I Find some error in the code, but I came to an understanding of how this code runs. here is it:
input :
3
1 2 3
cmd = 1 + ( 2 + 3)
then eval(cmd) i.e., eval("1 + (2 + 3)") which gives an output 6
another input:
4
4 5 6 2
cmd = 4 + ( 5 + 6 + 2)
eval(cmd)

if __name__ == '__main__':
N = int(raw_input())
lst=[]
for _ in range(N):
cmd, *line = input().split()
ele= list(map(str,line))
if cmd in dir(lst):
exec('lst.'+cmd+'('+','.join(ele)+')')
elif cmd == 'print':
print(lst)
else:
print('wrong command', cmd)

Python - turn some of the words in list/str to dots. len(list)?

I've started learning Python last week on codecademy and Google etc. but got stuck and couldn't find the answer anywhere so signed up on stackoverflow.com looking for your support.
I'm trying to build a program that only takes first 5 letters of any name and the remainder of the letter(s) to be shows as blank dot(s). e.g.
Adrian: "Adria."
Michael: "Micha.."
Alexander: "Alexa...." etc.
I tried to "fix" it with the "b" variable but that just prints three dots "..." regardless of how long the name is.
This is what I've got so far:
def namecheck():
name = raw_input("Name?")
if len(name) <=5:
print name
else:
if len(name) >5:
name = name[0:5]
b = ("...")
print name + b
namecheck()
I'm a total newbie so I apologise for any wrong spacing here, thank you for your support and patience.

As an alternative to sequence multiplication (one which is somewhat more self-documenting, and hopefully less confusing to maintainers), just use str.ljust to do your padding:
def namecheck():
name = raw_input("Name?")
# Reduce to first five (or less) characters, then pad with .s to original length
# with str.ljust
print name[:5].ljust(len(name), '.')
print name[:5] + '.' * (len(name) - 5) works fine, it's just a bit arcane (and also involves more temporary values, though in practice, the lack of actual method calls makes it faster on CPython).

you can try to use the function replace().
name = 'abcdefg'
name.replace(name[5:], '.' * len(name[5:]))
output: 'abcde..'
name='randy12345'
name.replace(name[5:],'.' * len(name[5:]))
output: 'randy.....'
name[5:] means get all the element starting 6 (5+1 because it start with 0)
'.' * len(name[5:] then this code count it and multiply it by dot
name.replace(name[5:],'.' * len(name[5:])) then use replace function to replace the excess element with dots

The most concise way I can think of:
def namecheck():
name = raw_input("Name?")
print(name[0:5] + '.' * (len(name) - 5))
namecheck()

Try something like this:
def namecheck():
name = raw_input("Name?")
if len(name) <= 5:
print name
else:
print name[0:5] + '.' * (len(name)-5)
namecheck()

python code to generate password list [closed]

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I am researching wireless security and trying to write a python script to generate passwords, not random, but a dictionary of hex numbers. The letters need to be capital, and it has to go from 12 characters to 20 characters. I went from 11 f's to 20 f's, this seems like it would meet the requirements. I then tried to place them in a text file. After I made the file, I chmod'ed it to 777 and then clicked run. It has been a few minutes, but I cannot tell if it is working or not. I am running it in kali right now, on a 64 bit core i3 with 8gb of ram. I'm not sure how long it would be expected to take, but this is my code, let me know if it looks right please:
# generate 10 to 32 character password list using hex numbers, 0-9 A-F
def gen_pwd(x):
x = range(17592186044415 -295147905179352830000)
def toHex(dec):
x = (dec % 16)
digits = "0123456789ABCDEF"
rest = dec / 16
if (rest == 0):
return digits[x]
return toHex(rest) + digits[x]
for x in range(x):
print toHex(x)
f = open(/root/Home/sdnlnk_pwd.txt)
print f
value = x
string = str(value)
f.write(string)
gen_pwd

how bout just
password = hex(random.randint(1000000,100000000))[2:]
or
pw_len = 12
my_alphabet = "1234567890ABCDEF"
password = "".join(random.choice(my_alphabet) for _ in range(pw_len))
or what maybe closer to what you are trying to do
struct.pack("Q",12365468987654).encode("hex").upper()
basically you are overcomplicating a very simple task
to do exactly what you are asking you can simplify it
import itertools, struct
def int_to_chars(d):
'''
step 1: break into bytes
'''
while d > 0: # while we have not consumed
yield struct.pack("B",d&0xFF) # decode char
d>>=8 # shift right one byte
yield "" # a terminator just in case its empty
def to_password(d):
# this will convert an arbitrarily large number to a password
return "".join(int_to_chars(d)).encode("hex").upper()
# you could probably just get away with `return hex(d)[2:]`
def all_the_passwords(minimum,maximum):
#: since our numbers are so big we need to resort to some trickery
all_pw = itertools.takewhile(lambda x:x<maximum,
itertools.count(minimum))
for pw in all_pw:
yield to_password(pw)
all_passwords = all_the_passwords( 0xfffffffffff ,0xffffffffffffffffffff)
#this next bit is gonna take a while ... go get some coffee or something
for pw in all_passwords:
print pw
#you will be waiting for it to finish for a very long time ... but it will get there

You can use time.time() to get the execution time. and if you are using python 2 use xrange() instead range because xrange return an iterator :
import time
def gen_pwd(x):
def toHex(dec):
x = (dec % 16)
digits = "0123456789ABCDEF"
rest = dec / 16
if (rest == 0):
return digits[x]
return toHex(rest) + digits[x]
for x in range(x):
print toHex(x)
f = open("/root/Home/sdnlnk_pwd.txt")
print f
value = x
string = str(value)
f.write(string)
start= time.time()
gen_pwd()
last=time.time()-start
print last
Note : you need () to call your function and "" in your open() function. also i think your first range is an extra command , as its wrong , you need to remove it.

Disclaimer
I'd like to comment on the OP question but I need to show some code and also the output that said code produces, so that I eventually decided to present my comment in the format of an answer.
OTOH, I hope that this comment persuades the OP that her/his undertaking, while conceptually simple (see my previous answer, 6 lines of Python code), is not feasible with available resources (I mean, available on Planet Earth).
Code
import locale
locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF-8')
pg = lambda n: locale.format("%d", n, grouping=True)
def count_bytes(low, hi):
count = low+1
for i in range(low+1,hi+1):
nn = 15*16**(i-1)
nc = i+1
count = count + nn*nc
return count
n_b = count_bytes(10,20)
n_d = n_b/4/10**12
dollars = 139.99*n_d
print "Total number of bytes to write on disk:", pg(n_b)
print """
Considering the use of
WD Green WD40EZRX 4TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5\" Internal Hard Drives,
that you can shop at $139.99 each
(see <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236604>,
retrieved on December 29th, 2014)."""
print "\nNumber of 4TB hard disk drives necessary:", pg(n_d)
print "\nCost of said hard disks: $" + pg(dollars)
Output
Total number of bytes to write on disk: 25,306,847,157,254,216,063,385,611
Considering the use of
WD Green WD40EZRX 4TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drives,
that you can shop at $139.99 each
(see <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236604>,
retrieved on December 29th, 2014).
Number of 4TB hard disk drives necessary: 6,326,711,789,313
Cost of said hard disks: $885,676,383,385,926
My comment on what the OP wants to do
Quite a bit of disk storage (and money) is needed to accomplish your undertaking.
Perspective
Projected US Federal debt at the end of fiscal year 2014 is $18.23 trillion, my estimated cost, not considering racks, power supplies and energy bills, is $886 trillion.
Recommended reading
Combinatorial_Explosion#SussexUniversity,
There is hope
If you are still convinced to pursue your research project on wireless security in the direction you've described, it is possible that you can get a substantial volume discount on the drives'purchase.

characters=["a","b","c"]
for x,y in zip(range(5),characters):
print (hex(x)+y)
Output:
>>>
0x0a
0x1b
0x2c
>>>
You see, its actually doing that with a short way. It is not possible if you use a range like that, keep it small and try to add another things to your result.
Also for file process, here is a better way:
with open("filepath/name","a+") as f:
f.write("whateveryouwanttowrite")
I was working with password generators, well better if you define a dict with complicated characters and compile them like:
passw={"h":"_*2ac","e":"=.kq","y":"%.hq1"}
x=input("Wanna make some passwords? Enter a sentence or word: ")
for i in x:
print (passw[i],end="")
with open("passwords.txt","a+") as f:
f.write(passw[i])
Output:
>>>
Wanna make some passwords? Enter a sentence or word: hey
_*2ac=.kq%.hq1
>>>
So, just define a dict with keys=alphabet and values=complicated characters, and you can make very strong passwords with simple words-sentences.I just wrote it for an example, of course you can add them to dict later, you dont have to write. But basic way is for that is better I think.

Preamble
I don't want to comment on what you want to do.
Code MkI
Your code can be trimmed (quite a bit) to the following
with open("myfile", "w") as f:
for x in xrange(0xff,0xff*2+1): f.write("%X\n"%x)
Comments on my code
Please note that
You can write hex numbers in source code as, ehm, hex numbers and you can mix hex and decimal notation as well
The to_hex function is redundant as python has (surprise!) a number of different ways to format your output as you please (here I've used so called string interpolation).
Of course you have to change the filename in the open statement and
adjust the extremes of the interval generated by xrange (it seems
you're using python 2.x) to your content.
Code MkII
Joran Beasley remarked that (at least in Python 2.7) xrange internally uses a C long and as such it cannot step up to the task of representing
0XFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. This alternative code may be a possibility:
f = open("myfile", "w")
cursor = 0XFFFFFFFFFF
end = 0XFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
while cursor <= end:
f.write("%X\n"%cursor)
cursor += 1

all of this is well and good, however, none of it accomplishes my purpose. if python cannot handle such large numbers, i will have to use something else. as i stated, i do not want to generate random anything, i need a list of sequential hex characters which are anywhere from 12 characters to 20 characters long. it is to make a dictionary of passwords which are nothing more than a hex number that should be about 16 characters long.
does anyone have any suggestions on what i can use for this purpose? i think some type of c language should do the trick, but i know less about c or c++ than python. sounds like this will take a while, but that's ok, it is just a research project.
i have come up with another possibility, counting in hex starting from 11 f's and going until i reach 20 f's. this would produce about 4.3 billion numbes, which should fit in a 79 million page word document. sounds like it is a little large, but if i go from 14 f's to 18 f's, that should be manageable. here is the code i am proposing now:
x = 0xffffffffffffff
def gen_pwd(x):
while x <= 0xffffffffffffffffff:
return x
string = str(x)
f = open("root/Home/sdnlnk_pwd.txt")
print f.upper(string, 'a')
f.write(string)
x = x + 0x1
gen_pwd()

Making string series in Python

I have a problem in Python I simply can't wrap my head around, even though it's fairly simple (I think).
I'm trying to make "string series". I don't really know what it's called, but it goes like this:
I want a function that makes strings that run in series, so that every time the functions get called it "counts" up once.
I have a list with "a-z0-9._-" (a to z, 0 to 9, dot, underscore, dash). And the first string I should receive from my method is aaaa, next time I call it, it should return aaab, next time aaac etc. until I reach ----
Also the length of the string is fixed for the script, but should be fairly easy to change.
(Before you look at my code, I would like to apologize if my code doesn't adhere to conventions; I started coding Python some days ago so I'm still a noob).
What I've got:
Generating my list of available characters
chars = []
for i in range(26):
chars.append(str(chr(i + 97)))
for i in range(10):
chars.append(str(i))
chars.append('.')
chars.append('_')
chars.append('-')
Getting the next string in the sequence
iterationCount = 0
nameLen = 3
charCounter = 1
def getString():
global charCounter, iterationCount
name = ''
for i in range(nameLen):
name += chars[((charCounter + (iterationCount % (nameLen - i) )) % len(chars))]
charCounter += 1
iterationCount += 1
return name
And it's the getString() function that needs to be fixed, specifically the way name gets build.
I have this feeling that it's possible by using the right "modulu hack" in the index, but I can't make it work as intended!

What you try to do can be done very easily using generators and itertools.product:
import itertools
def getString(length=4, characters='abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789._-'):
for s in itertools.product(characters, repeat=length):
yield ''.join(s)
for s in getString():
print(s)
aaaa
aaab
aaac
aaad
aaae
aaaf
...

Python - Converting a Number to a Letter without an if statement

I am making a program for my own purposes (a naming program) that completely generates a random name. The problem is I cannot assign a number to a letter, so as a being 1 and z being 26, or a being 0 and z being 25. It gives me a SyntaxError. I need to assign this because the random integer (1,26) triggers a letter (if the random integer is 1, select A) and prints the name.
EDIT:
I have implemented your advice, and it works, I am grateful for this, but I wish to have my program create readable names, or more procedural. Here is an example of a name after I tweaked my program: ddjau. Now that doesn't look like a name, so I want it my program to work as if it were creating REAL names, like Samuel or other common names. Thanks!
EDIT (2):
Thanks, Adam, but I need a sort of 'seed' for the user to enter for the start of the name is. (Seed = A, Name = Adam. Seed = G, Name = George.) Should I do this by searching the file line by line, at the very beginning? If so, how do I do this?

Short Answer
Look into Python dictionaries to allow the 1 = 'a' type assignments. Below I have working example that would generate a random name based on gender and a 'litter'.
Disclaimer
I do not fully understand (via the code) what you're trying to accomplish with char/ord and a random letter. Also note having absolutely no idea of your design goals or requirements, I have made the example more complex than it may need to be for instructional purposes.
Additional Resources
* Python Docs for dictionary
* Using Python dictionary relationship to search both ways
In response to the last edit
If you are looking to build random 'real' names, I think your best bet will be to use a large list of names and just pick a random one. If I were you I'd look into something linking to the census results: males and females. Note that male_names.txt and female_names.txt are a copy of the list found at the census website. As a disclaimer, I'm sure there is a more efficient way to load / read the file. Just use this example as a proof on concept.
Update
Here's a quick and dirty way to seed the random values. Again I am not sure that this is the most pythonic way or most efficient way, but it works.
Example
import random
import time
def get_random_name(gender, seed):
if(gender == 'male'):
file = 'male_names.txt'
elif(gender == 'female'):
file = 'female_names.txt'
fid = open(file,'r')
names = []
total_names = 0
for line in fid:
if(line.lower().startswith(seed)):
names.append(line)
total_names = total_names + 1
random_index = random.randint(0,total_names)
return names[random_index]
if (__name__ == "__main__"):
print 'Welcome to Name Database 2.2\n'
print '1. Boy'
print '2. Girl'
bog = raw_input('\nGender: ')
print 'What should the name start with?'
print 'A, Ab, Abc, B, Ba, Br, etc...'
print ''
l = raw_input('Leter(s): ').lower()
new_name = ''
if bog == '1': # Boy
print get_random_name('male',l)
elif bog == '2':
print get_random_name('female',l)
Output
Welcome to Name Database 2.2
1. Boy
2. Girl
Gender: 2
What should the name start with?
A, Ab, Abc, B, Ba, Br, etc...
Leter(s): br
BRITTA

chr (see here) and ord (see here) are the two functions you're looking for (though you already seem to know about the latter). Follow those links for a more detailed explanation.
The first gives you a one-character string based on the integer, the second does the reverse operaion (technically, it handles Unicode as well, which chr doesn't, though you have unichr for that if you need it).
You can base your code on the following:
ch = "E"
print ord (ch) - ord ("A") + 1 # should give 5 for the fifth letter
val = 7
print chr (val + ord ("A") - 1) # should give G, the seventh letter

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to do, but you can convert a number into a letter with the chr() function. chr() takes an ASCII code, so if you want to use the range [0, 25] instead you can adapt it like so:
chr(25 + ord('a')) # 'z'