In Rust, what is the proper way to replicate Python's "repeat" parameter in itertools.product?

Question

In Python, I can do:

from itertools import product

k = 3
for kmer in product("AGTC", repeat=k):
    print(kmer)

In Rust, I can force the behavior of k=3 by:

#[macro_use] extern crate itertools;

for kmer in iproduct!("AGTC".chars(), "AGTC".chars(), "AGTC".chars()){
    println!("{:?}", kmer);
}

But what if I wanted k=4 or k=5?

Can you explain whether you really need to yield tuples? With an argument `k` only known in run-time, you cannot produce Rust tuples of `k` values. — E_net4, May 23 '17 at 17:38
I don't necessarily need tuples; strings would be preferable. I'm eventually going to be searching longer strings for these kmers. — Jessime Kirk, May 23 '17 at 17:53

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered May 23 '17 at 21:01

Writing a proper generalisation for any type for any k would be hard because the return type could be tuples of any size. As you want to work only on String, it's quite easier: playground

fn kproduct(seq: String, k: u32) -> Vec<String> {
    match k {
        0 => vec![],
        1 => seq.chars().map(|c| c.to_string()).collect(),
        2 => iproduct!(seq.chars(), seq.chars()).map(|(a, b)| format!("{}{}", a, b)).collect(),
        _ => iproduct!(kproduct(seq.clone(), k - 1), seq.chars()).map(|(a, b)| format!("{}{}", a, b)).collect(),
    }
}

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 02 '21 at 21:15

I'm answering this question after 4 years both because the accepted answer is too convoluted, and due to the fact that Python's itertools.product is a generic function (whereas the accepted answer works only for Strings). Moreover, notice that the kproduct function defined in the accepted answer is recursive, and Rust doesn't guarantee tail-call optimization.

Using the third-party itertools crate, we can define a product_repeat function in two ways: either by defining a standard top-level function, or by adding a ProductRepeat trait for all Iterators.

This is the top-level function:

use itertools::{Itertools, MultiProduct};

/// Rust version of Python's itertools.product().
/// It returns the cartesian product of the input iterables, and it is
/// semantically equivalent to `repeat` nested for loops.
///
/// # Arguments
///
/// * `it` - An iterator over a cloneable data structure
/// * `repeat` - Number of repetitions of the given iterator
pub fn product_repeat<I>(it: I, repeat: usize) -> MultiProduct<I>
  where
    I: Iterator + Clone,
    I::Item: Clone {
  std::iter::repeat(it)
    .take(repeat)
    .multi_cartesian_product()
}

If you instead prefer augmenting the Iterator trait, you can do it as follows:

pub trait ProductRepeat: Iterator + Clone
  where Self::Item: Clone {
  fn product_repeat(self, repeat: usize) -> MultiProduct<Self> {
    std::iter::repeat(self)
      .take(repeat)
      .multi_cartesian_product()
  }
}

impl<T: Iterator + Clone> ProductRepeat for T
  where T::Item: Clone {}

Here is a demo in the Rust playground.

In Rust, what is the proper way to replicate Python's "repeat" parameter in itertools.product?

2 Answers2