All possible combinations and subsets of an array in java

Question

Given an array of variable dimensions.... Eg array={1,2,4,5}

I need a way to generale all possible combinations and subset of the array.

Given an array of n elements I need to have all subsets (all subsets of 1 element, all subset of 2 elements, all subset of n elements) an of each subset all possible permutations.

For example result should be:

{1}
{2}
{4}
{5}
{1,2}
{1,4}
{1,5}
{2,1}
{2,4}
{2,5}
....
....
{1,2,4,5}
{1,2,5,4}
{1,4,2,5}
{1,5,2,4}
{1,5,4,2}
{2,1,4,5}
{2,1,5,4}
....
....
{5,1,4,2}
{5,1,2,4}
{5,2,4,1}
....
....
etc...

ALL combination!

Is there a quick way? I don't have idea....

Answer 1

You should apply 2 steps:

1. You need to find all subsets of the given input. This set of subsets is called the Power Set .
2. For each element of this power set (that is, for each subset), you need all Permutations .

This implementation uses some utility classes from a combinatorics project. The output also contains the empty set {} and is not ordered by the size, but this may easily be done as a postprocessing step.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.NoSuchElementException;

public class AllCombinations {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Integer> list = Arrays.asList(1,2,4,5);

        PowerSetIterable<Integer> powerSet = 
            new PowerSetIterable<Integer>(list);
        for (List<Integer> subset : powerSet)
        {
            PermutationIterable<Integer> permutations = 
                new PermutationIterable<Integer>(subset);
            for (List<Integer> permutation : permutations) {
                System.out.println(permutation);
            }
        }

    }
}

//From https://github.com/javagl/Combinatorics
class PowerSetIterable<T> implements Iterable<List<T>> {
    private final List<T> input;
    private final int numElements;
    public PowerSetIterable(List<T> input) {
        this.input = input;
        numElements = 1 << input.size();
    }

    @Override
    public Iterator<List<T>> iterator() {
        return new Iterator<List<T>>() {
            private int current = 0;

            @Override
            public boolean hasNext() {
                return current < numElements;
            }

            @Override
            public List<T> next() {
                if (!hasNext()) {
                    throw new NoSuchElementException("No more elements");
                }
                List<T> element = new ArrayList<T>();
                for (int i = 0; i < input.size(); i++) {
                    long b = 1 << i;
                    if ((current & b) != 0) {
                        element.add(input.get(i));
                    }
                }
                current++;
                return element;
            }

            @Override
            public void remove() {
                throw new UnsupportedOperationException(
                        "May not remove elements from a power set");
            }
        };
    }
}
//From https://github.com/javagl/Combinatorics
class PermutationIterable<T> implements Iterable<List<T>> {
    public static int factorial(int n) {
        int f = 1;
        for (int i = 2; i <= n; i++) {
            f = f * i;
        }
        return f;
    }
    private final List<T> input;
    private final int numPermutations;
    public PermutationIterable(List<T> input) {
        this.input = input;
        numPermutations = factorial(input.size());
    }

    @Override
    public Iterator<List<T>> iterator() {
        if (input.size() == 0) {
            return Collections.<List<T>> singletonList(
                    Collections.<T> emptyList()).iterator();
        }
        return new Iterator<List<T>>() {
            private int current = 0;

            @Override
            public boolean hasNext() {
                return current < numPermutations;
            }

            @Override
            public List<T> next() {
                if (!hasNext()) {
                    throw new NoSuchElementException("No more elements");
                }
                // Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation
                List<T> result = new ArrayList<T>(input);
                int factorial = numPermutations / input.size();
                for (int i = 0; i < result.size() - 1; i++) {
                    int tempIndex = (current / factorial) % (result.size() - i);
                    T temp = result.get(i + tempIndex);
                    for (int j = i + tempIndex; j > i; j--) {
                        result.set(j, result.get(j - 1));
                    }
                    result.set(i, temp);
                    factorial /= (result.size() - (i + 1));
                }
                current++;
                return result;
            }

            @Override
            public void remove() {
                throw new UnsupportedOperationException(
                        "May not remove elements from a permutation");
            }
        };
    }
}

Answer 2

First, you need to find all the subsets of the array which are 2^n sets (including the empty set). Then once you find the subsets, loop through each of them and compute it permutation using a simple recursion which you can easily find online.

Answer 3

The easiest way I know is to loop over i from 1 to 2^n - 1 , where n is the size of the array.

The 1s in the bit pattern of i tell you which elements to select.

eg: With the array [4, 28, 37, 135] on the 10th loop:

10 == 1010b

1, 0, 1, 0 tells you to select the first and third elements of the array: [4, 37] .

Now that you have all combinations of elements in the array, you need to get all permutations, which can be done with some simple recursion.

pseudocode:

function getPermutations(arr)
{
    if length of arr == 1 {
        return [arr]
    } else {
        for i = 0 to highest index of arr {
            sub_arr = copy of arr
            remove element i from sub_arr
            perms = getPermutations(sub_arr)

            for each perm in perms {
                insert arr[i] at beginning of perm
            }
            return perms 
        }
    }
}

Answer 4

I'm providing the first solution it came to my mind for finding all subsets given a List (not the permutations, only the subsets). The method subSets gives all subsets of a specific size, while allSubSets iterates over the sizes. Once you have a list of all subsets, you can implement a permutation function that iterates over this list.

public class Subsets<T> {
    public List<List<T>> allSubSets(List<T> list) {
        List<List<T>> out = new ArrayList<List<T>>();
        for(int i=1; i<=list.size(); i++) {
            List<List<T>> outAux = this.subSets(list, i);
            out.addAll(outAux);
        }
        return out;
    }

    private List<List<T>> subSets(List<T> list, int size) {
        List<List<T>> out = new ArrayList<List<T>>();
        for(int i=0; i<list.size()-size+1;i++) {
            List<T> subset = new ArrayList<T>();
            for (int j=i;j<i+size-1;j++) {
                subset.add(list.get(j));
            }
            if (!(size==1 && i>0)) {
                for (int j=i+size-1;j<list.size();j++) {
                    List<T> newsubset = new ArrayList<T>(subset);
                    newsubset.add(list.get(j));
                    out.add(newsubset);
                }
            }
        }
        return out;
    }
}

To use it:

Subsets<Integer> aux = new Subsets<Integer>();
List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
list.add(1);
list.add(2);
list.add(3);
list.add(4);
list.add(5);
List<List<Integer>> out = aux.allSubSets(list);
System.out.println(out);