Get all combinations of an array

Question

I\'m currently trying to make a function that gets all possible combinations of array values.

I have come up with a non function version but it\'s limited to 3 value

Answer 1

Here is my solution:

function Remove ($element, $list)
{
    $newList = @()
    $list | % { if ($_ -ne $element) { $newList += $_} }

    return $newList
}


function Append ($head, $tail)
{
    if ($tail.Count -eq 0)
        { return ,$head }

    $result =  @()

    $tail | %{
        $newList = ,$head
        $_ | %{ $newList += $_ }
        $result += ,$newList
    }

    return $result
}


function Permute ($list)
{
    if ($list.Count -eq 0)
        { return @() }

    $list | %{
        $permutations = Permute (Remove $_ $list)
        return Append $_ $permutations
    }
}

cls

$list = "x", "y", "z", "t", "v"

$permutations = Permute $list


$permutations | %{
    Write-Host ([string]::Join(", ", $_))
}

EDIT: the same in one function (Permute). This is cheating a bit, however since I replaced plain functions whith lambdas. You could replace recursive calls with a stack you handle yourself, but that would make the code unecessarily complex ...

function Permute ($list)
{
    $global:remove = { 
        param ($element, $list) 

        $newList = @() 
        $list | % { if ($_ -ne $element) { $newList += $_} }  

        return $newList 
    }

    $global:append = {
        param ($head, $tail)

        if ($tail.Count -eq 0)
            { return ,$head }

        $result =  @()

        $tail | %{
            $newList = ,$head
            $_ | %{ $newList += $_ }
            $result += ,$newList
        }

        return $result
    }

    if ($list.Count -eq 0)
        { return @() }

    $list | %{
        $permutations = Permute ($remove.Invoke($_, $list))
        return $append.Invoke($_, $permutations)
    }
}

cls

$list = "x", "y", "z", "t"

$permutations = Permute $list

$permutations | %{
    Write-Host ([string]::Join(", ", $_))
}