Efficient way of generating original alphabetic strings like unix file "split"

[Rob Wolfe]

py_genetic <conor.robinson at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> I'm looking to generate x alphabetic strings in a list size x.  This
> is exactly the same output that the unix command "split" generates as
> default file name output when splitting large files.
>
> Example:
>
> produce x original, but not random strings from english alphabet, all
> lowercase.  The length of each string and possible combinations is
> dependent on x.  You don't want any repeats.
>
> [aaa, aab, aac, aad, .... aax, ...... bbc, bbd, .... bcd]
>
> I'm assumming there is a slick, pythonic way of doing this, besides
> writing out a beast of a looping function.  I've looked around on
> activestate cookbook, but have come up empty handed.  Any suggestions?

You didn't try hard enough. :)

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/190465

-- 
HTH,
Rob