The challenge is to write a sub that takes the paramters ($length, @symbols) and produces an ordered list of all sequnces of length $length that are combinations of characters from the list @symbols. The output ordering is based on the order of @symbols. Assume that @symbols is a list comprised of any quantity of one-byte ASCII chars.

My current attempt at 52 chars: 

sub c{my$n=-1+shift;$n?map{my$c=$_;map$c.$_,c($n,@_)}@_:@_}

[download]
Example: 
print join " ", c qw(2 a b c d);
print "\n";
print join " ", c qw(4 0 1);

# outputs
aa ab ac ad ba bb bc bd ca cb cc cd da db dc dd
0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 1010 1011 1100 1101 
+1110 1111

[download]
Good luck, and may your efforts yield little code :) 
   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print

Comment on (Golf) Ordered Combinations
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Re: (Golf) Ordered Combinations
by sachmet (Scribe) on Apr 25, 2001 at 01:42 UTC
    51 :-) 
    #!/usr/bin/perl

sub c {my$n=-1+shift;$n?map{my$c=$_;map$c.$_,c($n,@_)}@_:@_};
sub d {my$n=shift;--$n?map{my$d=$_;map$d.$_,d($n,@_)}@_:@_};

print join " ", c qw(2 a b c);
print "\n";
print join " ", d qw(2 a b c);
print "\n";
print join " ", c qw(4 0 1);
print "\n";
print join " ", d qw(4 0 1);
print "\n";

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: (Golf) Ordered Combinations
by satchboost (Scribe) on Apr 25, 2001 at 01:55 UTC
    I know that I'm bending the rules a little, but this does get below 50.

    sub c{my$n=pop;--$n?map{my$c=$_;map$c.$_,c(@_,$n)}@_:@_}

    Example: 

    print join " ", c qw(a b c 2);
print "\n";
print join " ", c qw(0 1 4);
print "\n";

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re (tilly) 1: (Golf) Ordered Combinations
by tilly (Archbishop) on Apr 25, 2001 at 06:51 UTC
    If we don't have to be strict compliant...49. 
    sub c {
@r='';@r=map{$c=$_;map$c.$_,@r}@_ for 1..shift;@r
}

    [download]
    (Note: I handle the case of $n=0 correctly. The solution that you started with does not...)
[reply]
[d/l]
      (Note: I handle the case of $n=0 correctly. The solution that you started with does not...)

      I can't slip anything past you, can I? :-) 

         MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print
[reply]
        Is there any way to print these results to a file?
[reply]

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