Use list/set comprehension merely as a "for" loop?

Question

I am creating a set of NUM_RECORDS tuples in Python. This is my code.

record_key_list = {(choice(tuple(studentID_list)),
                   choice(tuple(courseID_list)),
                   randint(2012, 2016),
                   choice(semesters),
                   choice(grades)[0]) 
                   for no_use in range(NUM_RECORDS)}

An alternative is to code the problem like this.

record_key_list = set()
while len(record_key_list) < NUM_RECORDS:
    record_key_list.add((choice(tuple(studentID_list)),
                        choice(tuple(courseID_list)),
                        randint(2012, 2016),
                        choice(semesters),
                        choice(grades)[0]))

I timed the two code snippets and they are roughly the same as fast for 20000 records. I prefer the first version of the code stylistically.

Is the first version of the code a correct usage of set comprehension? Or should I always stick to the second method?

EDIT: Improved formatting as suggested. I mostly just copied and pasted from the IDE. Sorry about that, guys.

Answer 1

The first code snippet looks totally fine. If anything, I would extract the record creation to a function for clarity and easier refactoring.

def random_record():
    studentID = choice(studentID_list)
    courseID = choice(courseID_list)
    year = randint(2012, 2016)
    semester = choice(semesters)
    grade = choice(grades)[0]
    return (studentID, courseID, year, semester, grade)

# ...

record_key_list = {random_record() for _ in range(NUM_RECORDS)}