Generating all possible combinations from a List[List[Int]] in Scala

Question

Given the following list:

List(List(1,2,3), List(4,5))

I would like to generate all the possible combinations. Using yield, it

Answer 1

Here's a recursive solution:

  def generator(x: List[List[Int]]): List[List[Int]] = x match {
    case Nil    => List(Nil)
    case h :: _ => h.flatMap(i => generator(x.tail).map(i :: _))
  }

which produces:

val a = List(List(1, 2, 3), List(4, 5))       
val b = List(List(1, 2, 3), List(4, 5), List(6, 7))

generator(a)    //> List(List(1, 4), List(1, 5), List(2, 4), 
                //| List(2, 5), List(3, 4), List(3, 5))
generator(b)    //> List(List(1, 4, 6), List(1, 4, 7), List(1, 5, 6), 
                //| List(1, 5, 7), List(2, 4, 6), List(2, 4, 7),
                //| List(2, 5, 6), List(2, 5, 7), Listt(3, 4, 6), 
                //| List(3, 4, 7), List(3, 5, 6), List(3, 5, 7))

Update: the second case can also be written as a for comprehension, which may be a little clearer:

def generator2(x: List[List[Int]]): List[List[Int]] = x match {
  case Nil    => List(Nil)
  case h :: t => for (j <- generator2(t); i <- h) yield i :: j
}

Update 2: for larger datasets, if you run out of memory, you can use Streams instead (if it makes sense to process the results incrementally). For example:

def generator(x: Stream[Stream[Int]]): Stream[Stream[Int]] = 
  if (x.isEmpty) Stream(Stream.empty) 
  else x.head.flatMap(i => generator(x.tail).map(i #:: _))

// NB pass in the data as Stream of Streams, not List of Lists
generator(input).take(3).foreach(x => println(x.toList))

>List(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
>List(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 200, 0)
>List(0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 0, 0)