Is there a function in Python which generates all the strings of length n over a given alphabet?

Question

I need a function generateAllStrings(n, alphabet) to do something like this:

generateAllStrings(4, ['a','b'])
>>> ["aaaa", "aaab", "aaba", "aabb", "abaa", .... , "bbba", "bbbb"]

In other words, generateAllStrings(n, alphabet) should return all the possible strings of length n over the chars in the list alphabet.

Is there such a function in itertools or something?

score 38 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 28 '11 at 12:17

38

>>> [''.join(i) for i in itertools.product("ab",repeat=4)]
['aaaa', 'aaab', 'aaba', 'aabb', 'abaa', 'abab', 'abba', 'abbb', 'baaa', 'baab', 'baba', 'babb', 'bbaa', 'bbab', 'bbba', 'bbbb']

answered Feb 28 '11 at 12:17

Kabie

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I like this much better than my answer =) – Wipqozn Feb 28 '11 at 12:19
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Beautiful: instant +1. A slight addition: instead of brackets for list comprehension, using parenthesis will return an interable instead of a full-fledged pregenerated list. – salezica Feb 28 '11 at 12:48
+1 for solution, and +1 to Santiago for the iterable remark --> laziness is beautiful. – Matthieu M. Feb 28 '11 at 13:08

Is there a function in Python which generates all the strings of length n over a given alphabet?

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