How to generate all possible combinations of K instances of N objects in Matlab?

Question

For example, if we have N=3 objects A, B and C, and wish to generate combinations of K=2 instances, we should get

AA
AB
AC
BA
BB
BC
CA
CB
CC

I.e. this is how figures in a number combinate.

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 25 '14 at 23:07

3

You can use fullfact:

fullfact([3 3])

This will produce all the combinations of 3 elements in the first row and 3 elements in the second row, resulting with:

answered Dec 25 '14 at 23:07

Mercury

1

To get characters use `s='A':'C';K=2;s(fullfact(repmat(numel(s),k,1)))` – Daniel Dec 25 '14 at 23:34

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 25 '14 at 22:46

1

Using allcomb from matlab file exchange:

allcomb(['A','B','C'],['A','B','C'])

A more generalized method:

s='A':'D'
k=3
e=repmat({s},1,k)
allcomb(e{:})

answered Dec 25 '14 at 22:46

Daniel

2 Answers2