How to generate a unique index for each possible configuration of an array

Asked Aug 17 '23 at 03:32

Active Aug 17 '23 at 03:32

Viewed 17 times

So I have an array that looks like this

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

It can be shuffled in any way like so

[6, 3, 4, 7, 1, 2, 8, 5]

How do I make a function that has a unique index for every possible configuration of these 8 elements? emphasized text(kind of like generating hashes) I've been trying to think of a way, and I can't seem to find it. Thanks for any advice!

asked Aug 17 '23 at 03:32

Levi Gibson

I means, you could just concatenate the digits. 63471285. – Raymond Chen Aug 17 '23 at 03:51
@RaymondChen what happens on a list like `[1, 11]`? – derpirscher Aug 17 '23 at 06:01
@derpirscher I assumed the starting array was always "the numbers 1 through N". If it could be an arbitrary set of distinct numbers, you can rename the values so the smallest value is called 1, the next-smallest value is called 2, etc. – Raymond Chen Aug 17 '23 at 13:31
@RaymondChen what if you have more than 10 values? – derpirscher Aug 17 '23 at 14:12
@derpirscher use two digits! – Raymond Chen Aug 17 '23 at 14:25

How to generate a unique index for each possible configuration of an array

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