Finding all combinations of well-formed brackets

Question

This came up while talking to a friend and I thought I\'d ask here since it\'s an interesting problem and would like to see other people\'s solutions.

The task is to

Answer 1

Haskell:

I tried to come up with an elegant list monad-y way to this:

import Control.Applicative

brackets :: Int -> [String]
brackets n = f 0 0 where
    f pos depth =
        if pos < 2*n
            then open <|> close
            else stop where
                -- Add an open bracket if we can
                open =
                    if depth < 2*n - pos
                        then ('(' :) <$> f (pos+1) (depth+1)
                        else empty

                -- Add a closing bracket if we can
                close = 
                    if depth > 0
                        then (')' :) <$> f (pos+1) (depth-1)
                        else empty

                -- Stop adding text.  We have 2*n characters now.
                stop = pure ""

main = readLn >>= putStr . unlines . brackets