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Finding the product of a variable number of Ruby arrays


I'm looking to find all combinations of single items from a variable number of arrays. How do I do this in Ruby?

Given two arrays, I can use Array.product like this:

groups = []
groups[0] = ["hello", "goodbye"]
groups[1] = ["world", "everyone"]

combinations = groups[0].product(groups[1])

puts combinations.inspect 
# [["hello", "world"], ["hello", "everyone"], ["goodbye", "world"], ["goodbye", "everyone"]]

How could this code work when groups contains a variable number of arrays?


Solution

  • groups = [
      %w[hello goodbye],
      %w[world everyone],
      %w[here there]
    ]
    
    combinations = groups.first.product(*groups.drop(1))
    
    p combinations
    # [
    #   ["hello", "world", "here"],
    #   ["hello", "world", "there"],
    #   ["hello", "everyone", "here"],
    #   ["hello", "everyone", "there"],
    #   ["goodbye", "world", "here"],
    #   ["goodbye", "world", "there"],
    #   ["goodbye", "everyone", "here"],
    #   ["goodbye", "everyone", "there"]
    # ]