How to use itertools to compute all combinations with repeating elements?

Question

I have tried to use itertools to compute all combinations of a list ['a', 'b', 'c'] using combinations_with_replacement with repeating elements. The problem is in the fact that the indices seem to be used to distinguish the elements:

Return r length subsequences of elements from the input iterable allowing individual elements to be repeated more than once.

Combinations are emitted in lexicographic sort order. So, if the input
iterable is sorted, the combination tuples will be produced in sorted
order.

Elements are treated as unique based on their position, not on their
value. So if the input elements are unique, the generated combinations
will also be unique.

Sot this code snippet:

import itertools

for item in itertools.combinations_with_replacement(['a','b','c'], 3): 
    print (item)

results in this output:

('a', 'a', 'a')
('a', 'a', 'b')
('a', 'a', 'c')
('a', 'b', 'b')
('a', 'b', 'c')
('a', 'c', 'c')
('b', 'b', 'b')
('b', 'b', 'c')
('b', 'c', 'c')
('c', 'c', 'c')

And what I need is the combination set to contain elements like: ('a', 'b', 'a') which seem to be missing. How to compute the complete combination set?

Asked By: tmaric

||

Source

Answer 1

It sounds like you want itertools.product:

>>> from itertools import product
>>> for item in product(['a', 'b', 'c'], repeat=3):
...     print item
...
('a', 'a', 'a')
('a', 'a', 'b')
('a', 'a', 'c')
('a', 'b', 'a')
('a', 'b', 'b')
('a', 'b', 'c')
('a', 'c', 'a')
('a', 'c', 'b')
('a', 'c', 'c')
('b', 'a', 'a')
('b', 'a', 'b')
('b', 'a', 'c')
('b', 'b', 'a')
('b', 'b', 'b')
('b', 'b', 'c')
('b', 'c', 'a')
('b', 'c', 'b')
('b', 'c', 'c')
('c', 'a', 'a')
('c', 'a', 'b')
('c', 'a', 'c')
('c', 'b', 'a')
('c', 'b', 'b')
('c', 'b', 'c')
('c', 'c', 'a')
('c', 'c', 'b')
('c', 'c', 'c')
>>>

Answered By: user2555451

Answer 2

For such small sequences you could use no itertools at all:

abc = ("a", "b", "c")

print [(x, y, z) for x in abc for y in abc for z in abc]
# output:
[('a', 'a', 'a'),
 ('a', 'a', 'b'),
 ('a', 'a', 'c'),
 ('a', 'b', 'a'),
 ('a', 'b', 'b'),
 ('a', 'b', 'c'),
 ('a', 'c', 'a'),
 ('a', 'c', 'b'),
 ('a', 'c', 'c'),
 ('b', 'a', 'a'),
 ('b', 'a', 'b'),
 ('b', 'a', 'c'),
 ('b', 'b', 'a'),
 ('b', 'b', 'b'),
 ('b', 'b', 'c'),
 ('b', 'c', 'a'),
 ('b', 'c', 'b'),
 ('b', 'c', 'c'),
 ('c', 'a', 'a'),
 ('c', 'a', 'b'),
 ('c', 'a', 'c'),
 ('c', 'b', 'a'),
 ('c', 'b', 'b'),
 ('c', 'b', 'c'),
 ('c', 'c', 'a'),
 ('c', 'c', 'b'),
 ('c', 'c', 'c')]

Answered By: Stefan van den Akker

How to use itertools to compute all combinations with repeating elements?

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