Generating All Permutations of Character Combinations when # of arrays and length of each array are
- by Jay
Hi everyone, I'm not sure how to ask my question in a succinct way, so I'll start with examples and expand from there. I am working with VBA, but I think this problem is non language specific and would only require a bright mind that can provide a pseudo code framework. Thanks in advance for the help!
Example:
I have 3 Character Arrays Like So:
Arr_1 = [X,Y,Z]
Arr_2 = [A,B]
Arr_3 = [1,2,3,4]
I would like to generate ALL possible permutations of the character arrays like so:
XA1
XA2
XA3
XA4
XB1
XB2
XB3
XB4
YA1
YA2
.
.
.
ZB3
ZB4
This can be easily solved using 3 while loops or for loops. My question is how do I solve for this if the # of arrays is unknown and the length of each array is unknown?
So as an example with 4 character arrays:
Arr_1 = [X,Y,Z]
Arr_2 = [A,B]
Arr_3 = [1,2,3,4]
Arr_4 = [a,b]
I would need to generate:
XA1a
XA1b
XA2a
XA2b
XA3a
XA3b
XA4a
XA4b
.
.
.
ZB4a
ZB4b
So the Generalized Example would be:
Arr_1 = [...]
Arr_2 = [...]
Arr_3 = [...]
.
.
.
Arr_x = [...]
Is there a way to structure a function that will generate an unknown number of loops and loop through the length of each array to generate the permutations? Or maybe there's a better way to think about the problem?
Thanks Everyone!
