list of all possible values

[David Gibb]

> Certainly possible with list comprehensions.
>
>>>> a = "abc"
>>>> [(x, y) for x in a for y in a]
> [('a', 'a'), ('a', 'b'), ('a', 'c'), ('b', 'a'), ('b', 'b'), ('b', 'c'),
> ('c', 'a'), ('c', 'b'), ('c', 'c')]
>
> But I like bearophile's version better.
>

Andreas,

Thanks, but I think you were missing my point. I should have explained better.

The advantage that bearophile's version is generic with respect to the
number of elements in each combination. To go from 2 element pairs
(e.g. ('a', 'c')) to 5 element pairs (e.g. ('a', 'c', 'b', 'b', 'e'))
requires only a change in a parameter passed to itertools.

I don't see how you would do that with list comprehensions. You're
example works nicely with 2 element pairs, but it seems to me like
you'd need to recode it if you wanted to change it to 5 element pairs.

Am I wrong about that? Can you think of a way to write a function
that, using list comprehensions, takes a list of values and the size
of each combination, and returns the len(list)**(combination size)
possible combinations using those values?

Thanks again,
David