Create random list of integers in Python

Question

I\'d like to create a random list of integers for testing purposes. The distribution of the numbers is not important. The only thing that is counting is time

Answer 1

All the random methods end up calling random.random() so the best way is to call it directly:

[int(1000*random.random()) for i in xrange(10000)]

For example,

• random.randint calls random.randrange.
• random.randrange has a bunch of overhead to check the range before returning istart + istep*int(self.random() * n).

NumPy is much faster still of course.