Assigning a Variable to a String - Print String while maintaining Value

Question

It feels like a silly question, but I'm blanking on a method of converting a string to an int value, and then later on printing the actual string while it maintains the value previously assigned.

I wrote a quick example to try and explain what I'm doing; assuming there would be no equal values.

unshuffled_list = [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,'J','Q','K','A']
random.shuffle(unshuffled_list)
aDeck = []
bDeck = []
aDeck = unshuffled_list[0:26]
bDeck = unshuffled_list[26:53]

i = 0

while i <= len(aDeck):
    print("Player A: {}\nPlayer B: {}".format(aDeck[i],bDeck[i]))
    if aDeck[i] > bDeck[i]:
        print("Player A wins!\n")
    if aDeck[i] < bDeck[i]:
        print("Player B wins!\n")
    i += 1

This code breaks, no kidding, because it can't compare a string to a int, but is it possible to have this sort of print out:

Player A: 9
Player B: Q
Player B Wins!

Basically so that it prints out the actual string included in the list, but maintaining the int variable that it is assigned to.

I have gotten the piece of code to work by just using a list of int values, but for the sake of learning I wanted to know if it was possible to do so.

I also tried to mess around with the str() and int(), but didn't have any luck.

Answer 1

Use a dictionary to map the named cards to their values.

cardValue = { 'J': 11, 'Q': '12', 'K': 13, 'A': 14}
def getCardValue(c)
    return cardValue[c] if c in cardValue else c

while i <= len(aDeck):
    print("Player A: {}\nPlayer B: {}".format(aDeck[i],bDeck[i]))
    cardA = getCardValue(aDeck[i])
    cardB = getCardValue(bDeck[i])
    if  cardA > cardB:
        print("Player A wins!\n")
    elif cardA < cardB:
        print("Player B wins!\n")
    else:
        print("It's a tie!\n")
    i += 1

Answer 2

Don't worry about the integer versus string stuff. You can leave your array as-is, with mixed types. There's no need to convert string to integer or vice versa at any point.

random.shuffle(unshuffled_list) shuffles unshuffled_list in place. i.e. you lose the original sort order. So let's start by preserving a copy:

from copy import copy
shuffled_list = copy(unshuffled_list)
random.shuffle(shuffled_list)

And then replace all references of unshuffled_list with shuffled_list in your code. This also makes your code a bit more self-documenting.

Then when it comes time to compare two cards, instead of this:

if  cardA > cardB:
    ...

Do this:

if unshuffled_list.index(cardA) > unshuffled_list.index(cardB):
    ...

You can read that comparison as "if the index of cardA in the unshuffled_list is greater than the index of cardB". That'll work and hopefully that's clear. Good luck!