Computing All The Possible Substrings of a Given String [duplicate]

Answer 1

Just use two for-loops:

generate substrings(string):
    for start in [0,1,...,string.length-1]:
        for end in [start,...,string.length-1]:
            yield string[start...end]

You can also do it this way with two for-loops:

generate substrings(string):
    for substringLength in [1,2,...,string.length]:
        for start in range [0,1,...,string.length-substringLength]:
            yield string[start...(start+substringLength-1)]
    yield ""

You probably want to include the empty string "" in the sequence you return as well, as it is a substring of all strings.

You also need to consider if it is valid to yield a duplicate string multiple times (e.g. do you return "ABA" twice as a substring of "ABABA"?). If the answer is no, merely make a hashtable called alreadyYielded, and whenever you yield, abort if you've already yielded the string, otherwise add the value to the hashtable in case you see it again. For example:

seen = new HashTable()
...
        substring = string[...]
        if substring not in seen:
            seen.add(substring)
            yield substring
...

Answer 2

Here's a 2-cent answer:

for (indexOfFirstLetterOfString = 0; indexOfFirstLetterOfString < string.length; indexOfFirstLetterOfString++) {

   for (indexOfLastLetterOfString = indexOfFirstLetterOfString + 1; indexOfLastLetterOfString < string.length; indexOfLastLetterOfString++) {

        addToArrayOfStrings ( string.substring (indexOfFirstLetterOfString, indexOfLastLetterOfString - indexOfFirstLetterOfString))
        incrementCounter();

    }
}

To get the number of combinations, simply add a counter to the inner loop.

For instance, in perl, this might look like:

$a = "ABCDE";

$numberOfSubstrings = 0;

for ($indexOfFirstLetter = 0; $indexOfFirstLetter <= length($a); $indexOfFirstLetter++) {

    for ($indexOfLastLetter = $indexOfFirstLetter + 1; $indexOfLastLetter <= length($a); $indexOfLastLetter++)  {
        print substr($a, $indexOfFirstLetter, $indexOfLastLetter - $indexOfFirstLetter) . "\n";

        $numberOfSubStrings++;
    }
}

print "Number of substrings: " . $numberOfSubStrings;