Finding cartesian product with PHP associative arrays

Question

Say that I have an array like the following:

Array
(
    [arm] => Array
        (
            [0] => A
            [1] => B
            [2] => C
         


        

Answer 1

If memory consumption is important or you don't need all the combinations in the end you could use an iterator to generate one combination at a time. If you need all the combinations you can use iterator_to_array.

function cartezianIterator($inputArray)
{
    $maximumPosition = array_map('count', $inputArray);
    $position = array_pad([], count($inputArray), 0);

    while (false !== ($item = buildItemAtPosition($inputArray, $position))) {

        yield $item;

        $position = incrementPosition($position, $maximumPosition);
    }
}

function buildItemAtPosition($inputArray, $positions)
{
    if ($positions[0] >= count($inputArray[0])) {
        return false;
    }

    $item = [];
    foreach ($inputArray as $rowIndex => $row) {
        $position = $positions[$rowIndex];

        $item[] = $row[$position];
    }

    return $item;
}

function incrementPosition($position, $maximumPosition)
{
    $digitToIncrement = count($position) - 1;

    do {
        $position[$digitToIncrement]++;

        if ($position[$digitToIncrement] < $maximumPosition[$digitToIncrement] || 0 === $digitToIncrement) {
            //no overflow
            break;
        }

        //overflow, reset to zero and increment parent digit
        $position[$digitToIncrement] = 0;

        $digitToIncrement--;
    } while ($digitToIncrement >= 0);

    return $position;
}

Then, to get one solution at a time you could use a foreach or next, like this:

$iterator = cartezianIterator($inputArray);

//of course, you need to do something with the result...
$combination = next($iterator);
$combination = next($iterator);
$combination = next($iterator);
$combination = next($iterator);
$combination = next($iterator);
$combination = next($iterator);

This solution is very very fast if you need only a few combinations. Also, the memory consumption is very low (it uses a flat array to store some integers).

Note: recursive functions are not used.