I don’t really have a better name for this. It’s also not completely clean, but it works. I had, almost a year ago (362 days ago), written a blog post about
lexicographic permutations. That was about permutations of elements within one array.
Someone on ruby-forum asked about permutations between multiple arrays. I
found something in C#, which I was happy to transcribe to Ruby and tweak a little.
def array_permutations array, index=0
# index is 0 by default : start at the beginning, more elegant.
return array[-1] if index == array.size - 1 # Return last element if at end.
result = []
array[index].each do |element| # For each array
array_permutations(array, index + 1).each do |x| # Permute permute permute
result << "#{element}, #{x}"
end
end
return result
end
So, we get this:
first = ['one', 'two']
second = ['three', 'four']
third = 'five', 'six']
result = array_permutations [first, second, third]
=> ["one, three, five", "one, three, six", "one, four, five", "one, four, six", "two, three, five", "two, thre
e, six", "two, four, five", "two, four, six"]
Magic!
——
Edit – of course, my solution is hackish, and someone came up with a quicker and more elegant solution:
def fancy_array_permutation array
return array[0] if array.size == 1
first = array.shift
return first.product( fancy_array_permutation(array) ).map {|x| x.flatten.join(" ")}
end
This gives the same result as above.
