Best way to do this? List loop (matrix?) iteration

[andydtaylor at gmail.com]

Hi!

I might be missing the obvious, or I may have found something more complicated than the VBA I am used to. Could it be I need to use a maths library?

For a given list of k items I'd like to turn it into an k*k matrix of item pairs.

List_sample = ['a', 'b', 'c']

Output:

aa ab ac
ba bb bc
ca cb cc

I'd like to have 2 hooks into this process
1. I want the opportunity to use a value pair each time they are generated (because I need to send these to an api and get a number back to put into a temporary list or dictionary - still tbd).
2. I'd also like to know each time a row is completed so I can bank that temporary list to a database table. Else build one big list and do it at the end, I'm still figuring this out.

#Code I've tried:

   stn_count = len(stn_list_short)
   for rowcount in range (0, stn_count):
      for colcount in range (0, stn_count):
         print stn_list_long[rowcount] stn_list_long[colcount]

I've found itertools, tee, and product and felt I was getting warmer. I'm still looking, but any pointers would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Andy