Little maths question

[Mark Smith]

Fantastic! I thought it had to be recursive...but when I started 
thinking about it, numbers started dancing uncontrollably (and 
unintelligibly) in front of my eyes.

Thanks!

Mark

On 12 Sep 2005, at 20:12, Alex Tweedly wrote:

> Mark Smith wrote:
>
>> This is probably really easy, but I'm so stupid when it comes to 
>> maths that I can't figure it out:
>>
>> Given a list of any number of lines, how can I generate a list of 
>> every possible combination of those lines ie.
>>
> Here's a way to generate all combinations of the numbers - you can go 
> from there to lines (or whatever) ...
>
>> function combinations pNum
>>   local tRes, temp, L
>>   if pNum <= 1 then
>>     return 1 & cr
>>   end if
>>   put  combinations(pNum-1) into temp
>>   repeat for each line L in temp
>>     put L & cr after tRes
>>   end repeat
>>   put pNum & cr after tRes
>>   repeat for each line L in temp
>>     put L & comma & pNum & cr after tRes
>>   end repeat
>>   return tRes
>> end combinations
>>
> or you can do it slightly more tersely and efficiently, but in a less 
> attractive order (*) as
>
>> function combinations pNum
>>   local tRes, temp, L
>>   if pNum <= 1 then
>>     return 1 & cr
>>   end if
>>   put  combinations(pNum-1) into temp
>>   repeat for each line L in temp
>>     put L & comma & pNum & cr after tRes
>>     put L & cr after tRes
>>   end repeat
>>   return tRes & pNum & cr
>> end combinations
>>
>
> (*) "attractive" ?? I don't know why - but I find the order produced 
> by the first code fragment more easy to follow, and hence more 
> "attractive". Call me a geek :-).
>
> -- 
> Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net
>
>
>
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