CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaalgorithmuniquecombinations
RaceBase
RaceBase

Reputation: 18848

Generate all unique combinations of Items

I trying to generate all possible unique combination of items.

Ex: item1, item2, item3

Combinations: 
   item1+item2+item3
   item1+item2
   item1+item3
   item2+item3
   item1
   item2
   item3

I am unable to get an idea on how to solve this?

for(int i=0;i<size;i++){
   for(int j=i+1;j<size;j++){
       System.out.println(list.item(i)+list.item(j));
   }
}

The above code certainly works for all unique combination of two elements. But not for 3 element pair and more..

Upvotes: 5

Views: 5764

Answers (3)

Eugene
Eugene

Reputation: 120858

guava has that build in, if that's an option

 Set<Set<String>> result = Sets.powerSet(Sets.newHashSet("item1", "item2", "item3"));
    for(Set<String> token : result){
        System.out.println(token);
    }

Upvotes: 4

Eyal Schneider
Eyal Schneider

Reputation: 22446

The following Java solution uses the bit approach proposed by zmbq :

  public static void allComb(int n) {
    BitSet bs = new BitSet();
    while (bs.length() <= n) {
      System.out.println(bs);
      //Inc by 1
      int pos = bs.nextClearBit(0);
      bs.flip(0, pos + 1);      
    }
  }

Upvotes: 2

zmbq
zmbq

Reputation: 39013

If you have N items, count from 1 to 2^N-1. Each number represents a combination, like so: if bit 0 (the least significant bit) is set, item1 is in the combination. If bit 1 is set, item2 is in the combination, and so on.

If you don't want 1-item combinations, start counting at 3, and ignore all the combinations that are a power of 2 (4, 8, 16, etc...).

Upvotes: 6

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