Permutations and combinations

[merlyn]

Description:

Here's a couple of code snippets I keep handy when I want to generate all combinations (no replacement) and permutations (all possible ways of combining a list of varying things). Enjoy.

You can probably see that I speak Perl with a lisp sometimes.

print "permute:\n";
print "[", join(", ", @$_), "]\n" for permute([1,2,3], [4,5,6], [7,8,9
+]);
print "combinations:\n";
print  "[", join(", ", @$_), "]\n" for combinations(1..5);

sub permute {
  my $last = pop @_;
  unless (@_) {
    return map [$_], @$last;
  }
  return map { my $left = $_; map [@$left, $_], @$last } permute(@_);
}
sub combinations {
  return [] unless @_;
  my $first = shift;
  my @rest = combinations(@_);
  return @rest, map { [$first, @$_] } @rest;
}