How to shuffle a list in python

In this article, we will see how to shuffle a list in Python. There are more than one way to achieve this. We will see various methods for shuffling a list

1. Using random.shuffle()

In the random library of Python, there is an inbuilt function random.shuffle() that in-place shuffles the list. The drawback of this is that list ordering is lost.

import random

test = [1, 5, 3, 8, 2, 9]
print("Original List: ", test)

random.shuffle(test)

print("Shuffled List: ", test)

Output:

Original List:  [1, 5, 3, 8, 2, 9]
Shuffled List:  [3, 8, 9, 1, 5, 2]

2. Using random.sample()
This function is better than the shuffle method. This is useful in cases we want to retain the original list.

import random

test = [1, 5, 3, 8, 2, 9]

print("Original List: ", test)

new = random.sample(test, len(test))

print("Shuffled List: ", new)

Output:

Original List:  [1, 5, 3, 8, 2, 9]
Shuffled List:  [3, 9, 8, 1, 5, 2]