Python .replace() Error

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!

Danica · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-27 23:58:01Z

2

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.

answered Jul 27, 2012 at 23:58

Danica

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2 Comments

Andrey Over a year ago

genRandom is a variable. As I said, it's a randomly generated number. str(genRandom()) worked, though, thanks!

Danica Over a year ago

@ghostmancer Yeah, sorry, I missed that part of the question originally; like I say in my edit, genRandom strongly sounds more like a function to me than a number. :)

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