recursive sequentially powerset function in python

Question

what I expect for [1,2,3] ->

[1]
[1, 2]
[1, 2, 3]
[1, 3]
[2]
[2, 3]
[3]

but my function give this result, I can not fix it ->

def foo(L,first,last,Output):
    if first>=last:
        return
    for i in range(first ,last):
        print(Output+[L[i]])
        foo(L,first+1,last,Output+[L[i]])
        


foo([1,2,3],0,3,[])


[1]
[1, 2]
[1, 2, 3]
[1, 3]
[1, 3, 3]
[2]
[2, 2]
[2, 2, 3]
[2, 3]
[2, 3, 3]
[3]
[3, 2]
[3, 2, 3]
[3, 3]
[3, 3, 3]

and in some situation I want to stop calculation and continue with others:

let say if 1 and 2 get come together, dont continue anymore

-> for [1,2,3] and (1,2)

what I expect:

[1]
[1, 3]
[2]
[2, 3]
[3]

iterative function is also good for me

Answer 1

Another way to think about the problem doesn't involve ranges, indexes or incrementing them, leading to many off-by-one errors . Instead we can reason about the problem inductively -

1. If the input t is empty, yield the empty set
2. (inductive) t has at least one element. For all p in the recursive sub-problem powerset(t[1:]) , yield p and yield p with the first element, t[0] prepended.

def powerset(t):
  if not t:
    yield ()                       # 1. empty t
  else:
    for p in powerset(t[1:]):      # 2. at least one element
      yield p
      yield (t[0], *p)

By using yield we move the desired effect outside of the powerset function. This allows the caller to decide what happens with each produced set -

for p in powerset("abc"):
  print(p)                   # <- desired effect

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

for p in powerset("abc"):
  print("".join(p))     # <- different effect

a
b
ba
c
ca
cb
cba

Answer 2

def helper(L,first,last,Output,isBack):
    if first>=last-1:
        return
    
    for i in range(first ,last):
        if L[i] in Output:
            continue
        print(Output+[L[i]])
        
        if isBack:
            helper(L,first+i,last,Output+[L[i]],False)
            
        else:
            helper(L,first+1,last,Output+[L[i]],False)
            
        isBack=True

def powerset(L):
    helper(L,0,len(L),[],True)

powerset([1,2,3,4,5])

Output:

[1]
[1, 2]
[1, 2, 3]
[1, 2, 3, 4]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[1, 2, 3, 5]
[1, 2, 4]
[1, 2, 5]
[1, 3]
[1, 3, 5]
[1, 4]
[1, 5]
[2]
[2, 3]
[2, 3, 4]
[2, 3, 4, 5]
[2, 3, 5]
[2, 4]
[2, 5]
[3]
[3, 4]
[3, 4, 5]
[3, 5]
[4]
[4, 5]
[5]

it could be better but that's all I could do