Find all ways to insert zeroes into a bit pattern
- by James
I've been struggling to wrap my head around this for some reason. I have 15 bits that represent a number. The bits must match a pattern. The pattern is defined in the way the bits start out: they are in the most flush-right representation of that pattern. So say the pattern is 1 4 1. The bits will be:
000000010111101
So the general rule is, take each number in the pattern, create that many bits (1, 4 or 1 in this case) and then have at least one space separating them. So if it's 1 2 6 1 (it will be random):
001011011111101
Starting with the flush-right version, I want to generate every single possible number that meets that pattern. The # of bits will be stored in a variable. So for a simple case, assume it's 5 bits and the initial bit pattern is: 00101. I want to generate:
00101
01001
01010
10001
10010
10100
I'm trying to do this in Objective-C, but anything resembling C would be fine. I just can't seem to come up with a good recursive algorithm for this. It makes sense in the above example, but when I start getting into 12431 and having to keep track of everything it breaks down.
