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Comment by vaingloriole | Hacker News Reader

Balderdash and hokum. z=1 ; while test ${z} -lt 4 ; do a=${RANDOM:1:3} ; dd if=/dev/urandom count=12 bs=4 of=${a} && b=$(cat ${a}) && echo ${b:$(expr 1 + ${RANDOM} % 4):12} ; ((z++)); done

You have one tool that you know well. I have thousands of tools that I've learned daily and I wrap with a bash script..except when I need python/tcl or C. Most of what I do in python/tcl/C is truly complicated, needs to be fast or use a data structure other than an array: as it should be. Most of what I do in the shell is as simple as the userspace tools and bash will let it be. Write the one liner above in python without importing a library.

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Pretty sure it's just this:

> python -c "for i in range(4): print(__import__('os').urandom(12)[__import__('random').randint(1,4):12])"

Or something like it, that bash one liner is pretty unreadable and full of side effects that may or may not be needed. A small 3 line python file would be cleaner and more readable.

TIL about Python __import__ function. Thanks!

What's the point of not importing a library/module? It's not like cheating or something.

Eh. Pros and cons.

I think most people are spoiled by being able to install anything; I work in a locked down environment and getting anything non-sanctioned in is very difficult, and the sanctioning process is tedious if nothing else.

That, and the fact that libraries are evolving- which is why we end up with horrible things like package/library version pinning.

Sure, but we're talking (with the problem at hand) about Python standard libraries that get shipped with the Python distribution and not some NPM or pip universe.

For instance the "os" module has an "urandom" function that does essentially the same as the "dd" in the bash script. Of course you could also read from the device so you wouldn't need to import "os". You would need to import "random" to get access to the random number generator, though, but it's still part of the standard library.

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