C# Permutation of an array of arraylists?
I have an ArrayList[] myList and I am trying to create a list of all the permutations of the values in the arrays.
EXAMPLE: (all values are strings)
myList[0] = { "1", "5", "3", "9" };
myList[1] = { "2", "3" };
myList[2] = { "93" };
The count of myList can be varied so its length is not known beforehand.
I would like to be able to generate a list of all the permutations similar to the following (but with some additional formatting).
1 2 93
1 3 93
5 2 93
5 3 93
3 2 93
3 3 93
9 2 93
9 3 93
Does this make sense of what I am trying to accomplish? I can't seem to come up with a good method for doing this, (if any).
Edit:
I am not sure if recursion would interfere with my desire to format the output in my own manner. Sorry I did not mention before what my formatting was.
I want to end up building a string[] array of all the combinations that follows the format like below:
for the "1 2 93" permutation
I want the output to be "val0=1;val1=2;val2=93;"
I will experiment with recursion for now. Thank you DrJokepu
I'm surprised nobody posted the LINQ solution.
from val0 in new []{ "1", "5", "3", "9" }
from val1 in new []{ "2", "3" }
from val2 in new []{ "93" }
select String.Format("val0={0};val1={1};val2={2}", val0, val1, val2)
Recursive solution
static List<string> foo(int a, List<Array> x)
{
List<string> retval= new List<string>();
if (a == x.Count)
{
retval.Add("");
return retval;
}
foreach (Object y in x[a])
{
foreach (string x2 in foo(a + 1, x))
{
retval.Add(y.ToString() + " " + x2.ToString());
}
}
return retval;
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
List<Array> myList = new List<Array>();
myList.Add(new string[0]);
myList.Add(new string[0]);
myList.Add(new string[0]);
myList[0] = new string[]{ "1", "5", "3", "9" };
myList[1] = new string[] { "2", "3" };
myList[2] = new string[] { "93" };
foreach (string x in foo(0, myList))
{
Console.WriteLine(x);
}
Console.ReadKey();
}
Note that it would be pretty easy to return a list or array instead of a string by changing the return to be a list of lists of strings and changing the retval.add call to work with a list instead of using concatenation.
How it works:
This is a classic recursive algorithm. The base case is foo(myList.Count, myList)
, which returns a List containing one element, the empty string. The permutation of a list of n string arrays s1, s2, ..., sN is equal to every member of sA1 prefixed to the permutation of n-1 string arrays, s2, ..., sN. The base case is just there to provide something for each element of sN to be concatenated to.
I recently ran across a similar problem in a project of mine and stumbled on this question. I needed a non-recursive solution that could work with lists of arbitrary objects. Here's what I came up with. Basically I'm forming a list of enumerators for each of the sub-lists and incrementing them iteratively.
public static IEnumerable<IEnumerable<T>> GetPermutations<T>(IEnumerable<IEnumerable<T>> lists)
{
// Check against an empty list.
if (!lists.Any())
{
yield break;
}
// Create a list of iterators into each of the sub-lists.
List<IEnumerator<T>> iterators = new List<IEnumerator<T>>();
foreach (var list in lists)
{
var it = list.GetEnumerator();
// Ensure empty sub-lists are excluded.
if (!it.MoveNext())
{
continue;
}
iterators.Add(it);
}
bool done = false;
while (!done)
{
// Return the current state of all the iterator, this permutation.
yield return from it in iterators select it.Current;
// Move to the next permutation.
bool recurse = false;
var mainIt = iterators.GetEnumerator();
mainIt.MoveNext(); // Move to the first, succeeds; the main list is not empty.
do
{
recurse = false;
var subIt = mainIt.Current;
if (!subIt.MoveNext())
{
subIt.Reset(); // Note the sub-list must be a reset-able IEnumerable!
subIt.MoveNext(); // Move to the first, succeeds; each sub-list is not empty.
if (!mainIt.MoveNext())
{
done = true;
}
else
{
recurse = true;
}
}
}
while (recurse);
}
}