[Alex Martelli] > map([random.randrange(5) for i in xrange(45)].count, xrange(5)) > > i.e., this gives 5 integers (each between 0 and 45 included) summing to > 45 -- add 1 to each of them to get the desired result.
This is a really nice approach. Besides being fast, it is not too hard to see that it is correct. FWIW, here's a variant with a count using the new defaultdict: n, m = 5, 45 bag = collections.defaultdict(int) for i in xrange(m): bag[random.randrange(n)] += 1 ans = [bag[k] for k in range(n)] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list