List Combinations

[Gerdus van Zyl]

I have a list that looks like this:
[['3'], ['9', '1'], ['5'], ['4'], ['2', '5', '8']]

how can I get all the combinations thereof that looks like as follows:
3,9,5,4,2
3,1,5,4,2
3,9,5,4,5
3,1,5,4,5
etc.

Thank You,
Gerdus

[George Sakkis]

On Mar 12, 10:18 am, Gerdus van Zyl <[e-mail]:

I have a list that looks like this:
[['3'], ['9', '1'], ['5'], ['4'], ['2', '5', '8']]

how can I get all the combinations thereof that looks like as follows:
3,9,5,4,2
3,1,5,4,2
3,9,5,4,5
3,1,5,4,5
etc.

Thank You,
Gerdus

Search for "cartesian product" recipes.

George

[Mark Dickinson]

On Mar 12, 10:18*am, Gerdus van Zyl <[e-mail]:

I have a list that looks like this:
[['3'], ['9', '1'], ['5'], ['4'], ['2', '5', '8']]

how can I get all the combinations thereof that looks like as follows:

You could wait for Python 2.6, or download the current alpha:

Python 2.6a1+ (trunk:61353M, Mar 12 2008, 11:21:13)
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>from itertools import product
for c in product(['3'], ['9', '1'], ['5'], ['4'], ['2', '5', '8']): print c

...
('3', '9', '5', '4', '2')
('3', '9', '5', '4', '5')
('3', '9', '5', '4', '8')
('3', '1', '5', '4', '2')
('3', '1', '5', '4', '5')
('3', '1', '5', '4', '8')

If you can't wait, look at http://docs.python.org/dev/library/itertools.html
where equivalent code is given.

Mark

[Mel]

Gerdus van Zyl wrote:

I have a list that looks like this:
[['3'], ['9', '1'], ['5'], ['4'], ['2', '5', '8']]

how can I get all the combinations thereof that looks like as follows:
3,9,5,4,2
3,1,5,4,2
3,9,5,4,5
3,1,5,4,5
etc.

Thank You,
Gerdus

What they said, or, if you want to see it done:
def combi (s):
if s:
for a in s[0]:
for b in combi (s[1:]):
yield [a] + b
else:
yield []

for y in combi ([['3'], ['9', '1'], ['5'], ['4'], ['2', '5', '8']]):
print y

[Arnaud Delobelle]

On Mar 12, 3:38*pm, "Reedick, Andrew" <[e-mail]:
[...]

Start here

http://www.mail-archive.com/python-l...msg178356.html
and go through the thread. *There are several ways to solve the problem
and we evaluated the performance and 'pythonicity' of each. *

I used a kind of extended cartesian product function a while ago while
writing a parser. If I simplify it down to a simple product function
it goes like this:

def product(*sequences):
i, n = 0, len(sequences)
vals = [None]*n
iters = map(iter, sequences)
while i >= 0:
if i == n:
yield tuple(vals)
i -= 1
else:
for vals[i] in iters[i]:
i += 1
break
else:
iters[i] = iter(sequences[i])
i -= 1

It's neither recursive nor a hack, I haven't tried to measure it
against other approaches (obviously it wouldn't beat the eval(...)
hack). I haven't optimised it for readability (by others) either :)

--
Arnaud