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pythonrubyarraysnumbers

Print out all combinations of elements in an array of arrays


Say you had the following

x = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]

What's the best way, say in python or ruby, to print out all combinations of the inner elements?

So the result would look like:

147,
148,
149,
157,
158,
159,
167,
...

This would lead to a more universal way of solving typical interview type questions like 'print all letter combinations of a phone number' or 'print the bit chart of number x.'

Anyway, thoughts?


Solution

  • In python:

    >>> x = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
    >>> import itertools as it
    >>> [x for x in it.product (*x) ]
    [(1, 4, 7), (1, 4, 8), (1, 4, 9), (1, 5, 7), (1, 5, 8), (1, 5, 9), (1, 6, 7), (1, 6, 8), (1, 6, 9), (2, 4, 7), (2, 4, 8), (2, 4, 9), (2, 5, 7), (2, 5, 8), (2, 5, 9), (2, 6, 7), (2, 6, 8), (2, 6, 9), (3, 4, 7), (3, 4, 8), (3, 4, 9), (3, 5, 7), (3, 5, 8), (3, 5, 9), (3, 6, 7), (3, 6, 8), (3, 6, 9)]
    

    Or if you want ints:

    >>> [int(''.join(str(x) for x in x)) for x in it.product(*x)]
    [147, 148, 149, 157, 158, 159, 167, 168, 169, 247, 248, 249, 257, 258, 259, 267, 268, 269, 347, 348, 349, 357, 358, 359, 367, 368, 369]
    

    Or without string manipulation:

    def makeNumber(t):
        sum (10 ** i * e for i, e in enumerate(t[::-1]))
    x = [[1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9]]
    print([makeNumber(x) for x in it.product(*x)])