All combinations of a list of lists
you need itertools.product
:
>>> import itertools
>>> a = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9,10]]
>>> list(itertools.product(*a))
[(1, 4, 7), (1, 4, 8), (1, 4, 9), (1, 4, 10), (1, 5, 7), (1, 5, 8), (1, 5, 9), (1, 5, 10), (1, 6, 7), (1, 6, 8), (1, 6, 9), (1, 6, 10), (2, 4, 7), (2, 4, 8), (2, 4, 9), (2, 4, 10), (2, 5, 7), (2, 5, 8), (2, 5, 9), (2, 5, 10), (2, 6, 7), (2, 6, 8), (2, 6, 9), (2, 6, 10), (3, 4, 7), (3, 4, 8), (3, 4, 9), (3, 4, 10), (3, 5, 7), (3, 5, 8), (3, 5, 9), (3, 5, 10), (3, 6, 7), (3, 6, 8), (3, 6, 9), (3, 6, 10)]
Nothing wrong with straight up recursion for this task, no need for external dependencies, and if you need a version that works with strings, this might fit your needs:
combinations = []
def combine(terms, accum):
last = (len(terms) == 1)
n = len(terms[0])
for i in range(n):
item = accum + terms[0][i]
if last:
combinations.append(item)
else:
combine(terms[1:], item)
>>> a = [['ab','cd','ef'],['12','34','56']]
>>> combine(a, '')
>>> print(combinations)
['ab12', 'ab34', 'ab56', 'cd12', 'cd34', 'cd56', 'ef12', 'ef34', 'ef56']
Simply use itertools.product
:
listOLists = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9,10]]
for l in itertools.product(*listOLists):
print(l)
The most elegant solution is to use itertools.product in python 2.6.
If you aren't using Python 2.6, the docs for itertools.product
actually show an equivalent function to do the product the "manual" way:
def product(*args, **kwds):
# product('ABCD', 'xy') --> Ax Ay Bx By Cx Cy Dx Dy
# product(range(2), repeat=3) --> 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111
pools = map(tuple, args) * kwds.get('repeat', 1)
result = [[]]
for pool in pools:
result = [x+[y] for x in result for y in pool]
for prod in result:
yield tuple(prod)