does C# have something equivalent to Pythons random.choices()

Question

I'm trying to do choices based on their weight/probability

this is what I had in python:

import random

myChoiceList = ["Attack", "Heal", "Amplify", "Defense"]
myWeights = [70, 0, 15, 15] // % probability = 100% Ex. Attack has 70% of selection

print(random.choices(myChoicelist , weights = myWeights, k = 1))

I want to do the same thing in c#, how does one do that? does C# have any methods similar to random.choices() all I know is random.Next()

*this python code works fine randome.choice takes in (sequence, weights, k) sequence: values, weights: A list were you can weigh the possibility for each value, k: the length of the returned list,

I'm looking to do the same for C#, choose values based on there probability

Answer 1

There is nothing built into C# like this, however, it's not that hard to add an extension method to recreate the same basic behavior:

static class RandomUtils
{
    public static string Choice(this Random rnd, IEnumerable<string> choices, IEnumerable<int> weights)
    {
        var cumulativeWeight = new List<int>();
        int last = 0;
        foreach (var cur in weights)
        {
            last += cur;
            cumulativeWeight.Add(last);
        }
        int choice = rnd.Next(last);
        int i = 0;
        foreach (var cur in choices)
        {
            if (choice < cumulativeWeight[i])
            {
                return cur;
            }
            i++;
        }
        return null;
    }
}

Then you can call it in a similar way as the Python version:

string[] choices = { "Attack", "Heal", "Amplify", "Defense" };
int[] weights = { 70, 0, 15, 15 };

Random rnd = new Random();
Console.WriteLine(rnd.Choice(choices, weights));