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c++stringcombinationspowersetlexicographic

Algorithm to print all combination of letters of the given string in lexicographical order


I tried to create the code to generate all possible combination of the given string in the lexicographical order:

The code that I wrote is:

void get(char *n)
 {
    int l=strlen(n); 
    sort(n,n+l);
    int k=0,m,i,j,z;

    while(k<l)
    {
        m=k;

        for(i=k;i<l;i++)
        {
            for(j=k;j<=i;j++)
                cout<<n[j];

            cout<<"\n";
        }

        for(z=m+2;z<l;z++)
            cout<<n[m]<<n[z]<<"\n";  

        k++;
    }
 }


int main() 
 {
    char n[100];
    cin>>n;
    get(n);
    return 0;
 }

Suppose the string is : abcde

My code is not generating combinations like:

abd
abe

The output I am getting for the string abcde are:

a 
ab
abc 
abcd 
abcde 
ac 
ad
ae 
b 
bc 
bcd 
bcde 
bd 
be 
c 
cd 
cde 
ce 
d 
de 
e

My output does not contains strings like : abd abe

Hope this makes the question clear

How to generate all these combinations using an efficient algorithm


Solution

  • This is a simple recursive approach:

    #include <string>
    #include <iostream>
    using namespace std;
    
    void get( string str, string res ) {
    
       cout << res << endl;
    
       for( int i = 0; i < str.length(); i++ )
          get( string(str).erase(i,1), res + str[i] );
    }
    
    int main( int argc, char **argv) {
    
       string str = "abcde";
       get( str, "" );  
       return 0;
    }
    

    Maybe not the most efficient way of doing it, but a short and simple one. Keep in mind, that enumerating all combinations has a complexity of O(2n) anyway. So there exists no efficient algorithm at all.