Non-redundant version of expand.grid

Question

The R function expand.grid returns all possible combination between the elements of supplied parameters. e.g.

> expand.grid(c(\"         


        

Answer 1

In base R, you can use this:

expand.grid.unique <- function(x, y, include.equals=FALSE)
{
    x <- unique(x)

    y <- unique(y)

    g <- function(i)
    {
        z <- setdiff(y, x[seq_len(i-include.equals)])

        if(length(z)) cbind(x[i], z, deparse.level=0)
    }

    do.call(rbind, lapply(seq_along(x), g))
}

Results:

> x <- c("aa", "ab", "cc")
> y <- c("aa", "ab", "cc")

> expand.grid.unique(x, y)
     [,1] [,2]
[1,] "aa" "ab"
[2,] "aa" "cc"
[3,] "ab" "cc"

> expand.grid.unique(x, y, include.equals=TRUE)
     [,1] [,2]
[1,] "aa" "aa"
[2,] "aa" "ab"
[3,] "aa" "cc"
[4,] "ab" "ab"
[5,] "ab" "cc"
[6,] "cc" "cc"