How can I print out all possible letter combinations a given phone number can represent?

Question

I just tried for my first programming interview and one of the questions was to write a program that given a 7 digit telephone number, could print all possible combinations

Answer 1

In Java using recursion:

import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;

public class Main {  
    // Number-to-letter mappings in order from zero to nine
    public static String mappings[][] = {
        {"0"}, {"1"}, {"A", "B", "C"}, {"D", "E", "F"}, {"G", "H", "I"},
        {"J", "K", "L"}, {"M", "N", "O"}, {"P", "Q", "R", "S"}, 
        {"T", "U", "V"}, {"W", "X", "Y", "Z"}
    };

    public static void generateCombosHelper(List combos, 
            String prefix, String remaining) {
        // The current digit we are working with
        int digit = Integer.parseInt(remaining.substring(0, 1));

        if (remaining.length() == 1) {
            // We have reached the last digit in the phone number, so add 
            // all possible prefix-digit combinations to the list
            for (int i = 0; i < mappings[digit].length; i++) {
                combos.add(prefix + mappings[digit][i]);
            }
        } else {
            // Recursively call this method with each possible new 
            // prefix and the remaining part of the phone number.
            for (int i = 0; i < mappings[digit].length; i++) {
                generateCombosHelper(combos, prefix + mappings[digit][i], 
                        remaining.substring(1));
            }
        }
    }

    public static List generateCombos(String phoneNumber) {
        // This will hold the final list of combinations
        List combos = new LinkedList();

        // Call the helper method with an empty prefix and the entire 
        // phone number as the remaining part.
        generateCombosHelper(combos, "", phoneNumber);

        return combos;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String phone = "3456789";
        List combos = generateCombos(phone);

        for (String s : combos) {
            System.out.println(s);
        }
    }
}