Generating all combinations with repetition using MATLAB
We can use the bijection mentioned in the wikipedia article, which maps combinations without repetition of type n+k-1 choose k
to k
-multicombinations of size n
. We generate the combinations without repetition and map them using bsxfun(@minus, nchoosek(1:n+k-1,k), 0:k-1);
. This results in the following function:
function combs = nmultichoosek(values, k)
%// Return number of multisubsets or actual multisubsets.
if numel(values)==1
n = values;
combs = nchoosek(n+k-1,k);
else
n = numel(values);
combs = bsxfun(@minus, nchoosek(1:n+k-1,k), 0:k-1);
combs = reshape(values(combs),[],k);
end
Thanks to Hans Hirse for a correction.
Brute-force approach: generate all tuples and then keep only those that are sorted. Not suitable for large values of n
or k
.
values = 1:3; %// data
k = 3; %// data
n = numel(values); %// number of values
combs = values(dec2base(0:n^k-1,n)-'0'+1); %// generate all tuples
combs = combs(all(diff(combs.')>=0, 1),:); %'// keep only those that are sorted