Given I am iterating through multiple lists of elements that are zipped together, I need to create all possible outcomes given I can only choose an element from a single list at each iteration.
Example input 1:
a = [3,19,13]
b = [20,18,7]
Example output 1:
[[3, 19, 13], [3, 19, 7], [3, 18, 13], [3, 18, 7], [20, 19, 13], [20, 19, 7], [20, 18, 13], [20, 18, 7]]
Example input 2:
a = ['A','B']
b = ['C','D']
Example output 2:
[['A', 'B'], ['A', 'D'], ['C', 'B'], ['C', 'D']]
I'm struggling to find the right mathematical terminology to define exactly what I am asking for. I do not think permutations, combinations, or cartesian product are correct or precise enough.
Given I am iterating through multiple lists of elements that are zipped together, I need to create all possible outcomes given I can only choose an element from a single list at each iteration.
Example input 1:
a = [3,19,13]
b = [20,18,7]
Example output 1:
[[3, 19, 13], [3, 19, 7], [3, 18, 13], [3, 18, 7], [20, 19, 13], [20, 19, 7], [20, 18, 13], [20, 18, 7]]
Example input 2:
a = ['A','B']
b = ['C','D']
Example output 2:
[['A', 'B'], ['A', 'D'], ['C', 'B'], ['C', 'D']]
I'm struggling to find the right mathematical terminology to define exactly what I am asking for. I do not think permutations, combinations, or cartesian product are correct or precise enough.
Share Improve this question asked Feb 2 at 2:38 Matthew ThomasMatthew Thomas 86113 silver badges18 bronze badges 01 Answer
Reset to default 2You can compute this by taking the product of the sets of the n'th terms of the list. Each set will contain all the choices for the n'th element of the new list, so the product of all the sets will be all the possible combinations of those choices.
Implementation-wise, you can use zip to gather the "sets" into lists and itertools.product to multiply the albums setlists sets/lists.
import itertools
def get_paths(*iterables):
return list(itertools.product(*zip(*iterables)))
a = [3,19,13]
b = [20,18,7]
print(get_paths(a, b))
a = ['A','B']
b = ['C','D']
print(get_paths(a, b))