[Wellington-pm] Combinatorics

Peter Kelly perlmonger at pck.co.nz
Tue Jul 4 02:45:41 PDT 2017


So, let me start with a confession - I stopped at sixth form maths.

The programme I am trying to write this evening seeks to combine one
element of set A, with one element of set B, one element of set C, etc.

I don't know beforehand how many sets there will be.   Each set has a
different number of members.

I need to test all the combinations, so that if we have sets A B C, and A
has 2 items, B has 5 items, and C has 2 items, we end up with 2*5*2
combinations = 20.

k possible combinations of items in a single set is conveniently available
through Algorithm::Combinatorics.  I've used that elsewhere in this
programme but it doesn't seem to handle multiple sets.

I've spent the last few hours on this, and have started a few ways.  I have
something written using recursion, tracking which sets have already been
accessed using an arrayref, and passing around a hashref.  But I am
seriously bogged down in that "delete the code and start again" sort of way.

Are there any better ideas that any of you can point me to?

Thanks,

Peter
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/wellington-pm/attachments/20170704/b8a07f71/attachment.html>


More information about the Wellington-pm mailing list