on generating combinations among a variable list of lists

[Peter Otten]

Boris Dorestand wrote:

> Say we have [1,3,5,7], [2,3], [1,10].  I'd like to generate
> 
>   [1,2,1]
>   [1,2,10]
>   [1,3,1]
>   [1,3,10]
>   [3,2,1]
>   [3,2,10]
>   [3,3,1]
>   [3,3,10]
>   [5, ...]
>   ...
>   [7,3,10]
> 
> The number of input lists is variable.  The example shows three lists,
> but there could be only one or ten lists or any other number of lists.
> 
> I looked at itertools.  There doesn't seem to be any procedure ready for
> this.  I might have to combine some of them but I'm not yet sure how.

itertools.product() seems to do what you want:

>>> for t  in itertools.product([1,3,5,7], [2,3], [1,10]):
...    print(t)
... 
(1, 2, 1)
(1, 2, 10)
(1, 3, 1)
(1, 3, 10)
(3, 2, 1)
(3, 2, 10)
(3, 3, 1)
(3, 3, 10)
(5, 2, 1)
(5, 2, 10)
(5, 3, 1)
(5, 3, 10)
(7, 2, 1)
(7, 2, 10)
(7, 3, 1)
(7, 3, 10)

If you need lists instead of tuples convert them

>>> list(t)
[7, 3, 10]

To pass a varying number of lists use a list of lists and a star argument:

>>> lists = [[[1, 2], [3, 4]], [[10, 20, 30], [40, 50]]]
>>> for item in lists:
...     print(list(itertools.product(*item)))
... 
[(1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 3), (2, 4)]
[(10, 40), (10, 50), (20, 40), (20, 50), (30, 40), (30, 50)]