Unyeilding a permutation generator

[sillyhat]

Hello, can someone please help.

I found the following code at http://code.activestate.com/recipes/252178/

def all_perms(str):
if len(str) <=1:
yield str
else:
for perm in all_perms(str[1:]):
for i in range(len(perm) +1):
#nb str[0:1] works in both string and list contexts
yield perm[:i] + str[0:1] + perm[i:]

which allows me to do things like

for x in all_permx("ABCD "):
print x

I believe it is making use of the plain changes / Johnson Trotter
algorithm.
Can someone please confirm?

Anyway what I want to do is experiment with code similar to this (i.e.
same algorithm and keep the recursion) in other languages,
particularly vbscript and wondered what it would look like if it was
rewritten to NOT use the yield statement - or at least if it was
amended so that it can be easily translated to other languages that
dont have python's yield statement. I think the statement "for perm in
all_perms(str[1:]):" will be hardest to replicate in a recursive
vbscript program for example.

Thanks for any constructive help given.

Hal

[Paul Rubin]

si******@yahoo. com writes:

Anyway what I want to do is experiment with code similar to this (i.e.
same algorithm and keep the recursion) in other languages,
particularly vbscript and wondered what it would look like if it was
rewritten to NOT use the yield statement -

Without the yield statement and keeping the same space complexity, you
basically have to wrap the enumeration state in a data object that you
can enumerate over explicitly. That in turn may mean you have to
unwind the recursion into old fashioned stack operations.

[Carsten Haese]

si******@yahoo. com wrote:

Anyway what I want to do is experiment with code similar to this (i.e.
same algorithm and keep the recursion) in other languages,
particularly vbscript and wondered what it would look like if it was
rewritten to NOT use the yield statement

An obvious (though memory-inefficient) replacement is to accumulate a
list and return the list. Initialize a result variable to an empty list,
and instead of yielding elements, append them to the result variable.
Then return the result variable at the end of the function.

HTH,

--
Carsten Haese
http://informixdb.sourceforge.net

[Aaron Brady]

On Nov 2, 3:34*pm, silly...@yahoo. com wrote:

Hello, can someone please help.

I found the following code athttp://code.activestat e.com/recipes/252178/

def all_perms(str):
* * if len(str) <=1:
* * * * yield str
* * else:
* * * * for perm in all_perms(str[1:]):
* * * * * * for i in range(len(perm) +1):
* * * * * * * * #nb str[0:1] works in both string and list contexts
* * * * * * * * yield perm[:i] + str[0:1] + perm[i:]

which allows me to do things like

for x in *all_permx("ABC D"):
* print x

I believe it is making use of the plain changes / Johnson Trotter
algorithm.
Can someone please confirm?

Anyway what I want to do is experiment with code similar to this (i.e.
same algorithm and keep the recursion) in other languages,
particularly vbscript and wondered what it would look like if it was
rewritten to NOT use the yield statement - or at least if it was
amended so that it can be easily translated to other languages that
dont have python's yield statement. I think the statement "for perm in
all_perms(str[1:]):" *will be hardest to replicate in a recursive
vbscript program for example.

Thanks for any constructive help given.

Hal

I think multi-threading is the "truest" to the original. You might
develop a framework to set events when particular generators are to
take a turn, place their "yields", per se, in a particular place, set
the return event, etc., and reuse it. Of course, starting threads in
VBS might be another matter.

[Steve Holden]

si******@yahoo. com wrote:

Hello, can someone please help.

I found the following code at http://code.activestate.com/recipes/252178/

def all_perms(str):
if len(str) <=1:
yield str
else:
for perm in all_perms(str[1:]):
for i in range(len(perm) +1):
#nb str[0:1] works in both string and list contexts
yield perm[:i] + str[0:1] + perm[i:]

which allows me to do things like

for x in all_permx("ABCD "):
print x

I believe it is making use of the plain changes / Johnson Trotter
algorithm.
Can someone please confirm?

Anyway what I want to do is experiment with code similar to this (i.e.
same algorithm and keep the recursion) in other languages,
particularly vbscript and wondered what it would look like if it was
rewritten to NOT use the yield statement - or at least if it was
amended so that it can be easily translated to other languages that
dont have python's yield statement. I think the statement "for perm in
all_perms(str[1:]):" will be hardest to replicate in a recursive
vbscript program for example.

There are various approaches you could use, the simplest of which is to
provide a "callback function" as an additional argument to the all_perms
function, and call it with the permutation as an argument in place of
the yield statement.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden [phone] [phone]
Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/

[Terry Reedy]

Steve Holden wrote:

si******@yahoo. com wrote:

>Anyway what I want to do is experiment with code similar to this (i.e.
same algorithm and keep the recursion) in other languages,
particularly vbscript and wondered what it would look like if it was
rewritten to NOT use the yield statement - or at least if it was
amended so that it can be easily translated to other languages that
dont have python's yield statement. I think the statement "for perm in
all_perms(st r[1:]):" will be hardest to replicate in a recursive
vbscript program for example.

There are various approaches you could use, the simplest of which is to
provide a "callback function" as an additional argument to the all_perms
function, and call it with the permutation as an argument in place of
the yield statement.

I had thought of three ways to avoid yield, that makes a fourth.

Summary:

1. Think of generator function as an abbreviated iterator class and
unabbreviate by writing a full iterator class with .__next__ (3.0).
+ Transparent to caller
- Will often have to re-arrange code a bit to save locals values as
attributes before returning. If there is an inner loop, efficiency may
require copying attributes to locals.

2. Add to collection rather than yield, then return collection rather
than raise StopIteration.
+ Transparent to caller; small change to function.
- Returned collection can be arbitrarily large and take an arbitrarily
long time to collect.

3. Add callback parameter and change 'yield value' to 'callback(value )'.
+ Minor change to generator function.
- Minor to major change to caller to turn consumer code into a callback
that somehow gets result of callback to where it is needed. (Avoiding
the major changes sometimes needed was one of the motivations for
generators.)

4. Combine caller and generator code by inlining one into or around the
other.
+ Neither code will change much.
- Loss benefit of modularity and reuse without cut-and-paste, which is
subject to error.

I have not thought through yet how well each of these work with
recursive generators.

Conclusion:

Generators with yield make Python a great language for expressing
combinatorial algorithms.

Terry Jan Reedy

[Michele Simionato]

On Nov 2, 10:34*pm, silly...@yahoo. com wrote:

Anyway what I want to do is experiment with code similar to this (i.e.
same algorithm and keep the recursion) in other languages,
particularly vbscript and wondered what it would look like if it was
rewritten to NOT use the yield statement - or at least if it was
amended so that it can be easily translated to other languages that
dont have python's yield statement. I think the statement "for perm in
all_perms(str[1:]):" *will be hardest to replicate in a recursive
vbscript program for example.

Thanks for any constructive help given.

Here is a solution which does not use yield, translittered
from some Scheme code I have:

def perm(lst):
ll = len(lst)
if ll == 0:
return []
elif ll == 1:
return [lst]
else:
return [[el] + ls for el in lst
for ls in perm([e for e in lst if not e==el])]

if __name__ == '__main__':
print perm('abcd')

[Jorgen Grahn]

On Sun, 2 Nov 2008 14:09:01 -0800 (PST), Aaron Brady <ca********@gma il.comwrote:

On Nov 2, 3:34*pm, silly...@yahoo. com wrote:

....

>for x in *all_permx("ABC D"):
* print x

....

I think multi-threading is the "truest" to the original. You might
develop a framework to set events when particular generators are to
take a turn, place their "yields", per se, in a particular place, set
the return event, etc., and reuse it. Of course, starting threads in
VBS might be another matter.

Why multi-threading? I see no concurrency in the original algorithm.
There is, in my mind, nothing concurrent about 'yield'.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu
\X/ snipabacken.se R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:09:58 +0000, Jorgen Grahn wrote:

Why multi-threading? I see no concurrency in the original algorithm.
There is, in my mind, nothing concurrent about 'yield'.

No "real" concurrency but a generator can be seen as independent thread
of code where the generator code is allowed to run when `next()` is
called and stops itself when it ``yield``\s an object. Sort of
cooperative multitasking. The name "yield" is often used in concurrent
code like Java's or Io's `yield()` methods.

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

[Aaron Brady]

On Nov 3, 4:13*pm, Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch <[e-mail] wrote:

On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:09:58 +0000, Jorgen Grahn wrote:

Why multi-threading? *I see no concurrency in the original algorithm.
There is, in my mind, nothing concurrent about 'yield'.

No "real" concurrency but a generator can be seen as independent thread
of code where the generator code is allowed to run when `next()` is
called and stops itself when it ``yield``\s an object. *Sort of
cooperative multitasking. *The name "yield" is often used in concurrent
code like Java's or Io's `yield()` methods.

Ciao,
* * * * Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

Further, it resumes where it left off when it gets control again:

"execution is stopped at the yield keyword (returning the result) and
is resumed there when the next element is requested by calling the
next() method" --the fine manual

It maintains and operates in its own separate execution frame, etc.