In Perl, how can I iterate over the Cartesian product of multiple sets?

Question

Given x number of arrays, each with a possibly different number of elements, how can I iterate through all combinations where I select one item from each array?

Answer 1

You can use nested loops.

for my $e1 (qw( foo bar baz )) {
for my $e2 (qw( cat dog )) {
for my $e3 (qw( 1 2 3 4 )) {
   my @choice = ($e1, $e2, $e3); 
   ...
}}}

When you need an arbitrary number of nested loops, you can use Algorithm::Loops's NestedLoops.

use Algorithm::Loops qw( NestedLoops );

my @lists = (
   [qw( foo bar baz )],
   [qw( cat dog )],
   [qw( 1 2 3 4 )],
);

my $iter = NestedLoops(\@lists);
while ( my @choice = $iter->() ) {
   ...
}