List creation, manipulation, user interaction, loops, and just winging some fun stuff for a game

Question

I'm trying to learn Python and this is my fist functioning little bit I wrote for a campaign I'm doing in D&D. I was wondering if I was doing anything wrong or if anyone had tips on how to make it more readable, function smoother, or be more interactive.

from random import randint
spells = '''Rol 
#A LOT OF TEXT FROM HERE

I copied this part from roll20 website list of spells then just broke it up biased on the line breaks. 
#to here...
'''

spells=spells.split('''\n\n''')

for i in [348, 332, 315, 294, 262, 224, 192, 149, 94, 44, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0]:
  del spells[i]

def ask():
  print('"So ya done goofed I see, usin magic where there not be, I have your roll and the spell out of control, just tell me what you need!"')
  while True:
    print()
    print('if you need a random spell type random or r, if you need a specific spell enter a number from 1 to '+str(len(spells)))
    need=input()
    if need.isdigit():
      need=int(need)
      if need > len(spells)  :
        print('"THERES NOT THAT MANY SPELLS YE TROLLUP"')
      elif need<1:
        print('"thee list start at ONE ye trollup"')
      else:
        print(spells[need-1])

    elif need.lower().startswith('r'):  
      need=randint(0,len(spells)+1)
      need=need-1
      print(spells[need])

    else:
      print('FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTS WITH INTIGER OR RANDOM YE GOD FEARING REBEL')



ask()

Also, to get that fun little list that I made to get rid of useless strings in my spells list, I went ahead and wrote this:

guess=0
correctGuess=[]
for i in spells:
  if len(i)<15: #because I knew the strings I wanted to remove were under 15 in length 
    print(i)
    x=i
    while x != spells[guess]:
      guess=guess+1
      if x==spells[guess]:
        print('That spell is '+str(guess))
        correctGuess.append(guess)

#reversed list so that when it removes the specific threads it isn't changing the length that the next thread to be removed is at 
revCorrectGuess=list(reversed(correctGuess))

Then I manually copied the output list and took out the bit to make my code a little shorter.

Full code

Answer 1

As a beginner Pythonista, one of the easiest ways to get tips on writing Python is to run your script(s) through pep8. That said, here are some non-PEP8-related tips:

• Avoid pre-processing constant data on every run. After deleting what I assume are non-applicable spells simply replace the original array with the output of print(spells).

• Reusing variables like you use spells and need is a code smell - it's hard to read the code and understand immediately what the type is at any given point. Instead you can either use a separate variable to avoid confusion or (in the need case) reverse the random/int check:

  if need == 'r':
      […]
  else:
      try:
          spell_number = int(need)
      except ValueError:
          print("Arr or a number, dammit!")
  

• randint "[returns] a random integer N such that a <= N <= b." So you should print(spells[randint(0, len(spells)-1)]).
• Your code is screaming for a class like Spellbook to reuse within other code.
• Ditto for a main function with some argparse magic to enable scripting.
• An IDE like PyCharm will do spell checking for you (snarky slang not included in the last community edition).