Python Cartesian Product

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Get the cartesian product of a series of lists in Python

I'm trying to figure out some logic that I just can't wrap my head around. Say I have the following data structure:

letters = (
    ('b','c'),
    ('a','e','ee'),
    ('d','f'),
    ('e','y'),
)

How would I iterate through this to get every possible string combination:

bade
cade
bede
cede
beede
ceede
bafe
cafe
befe
cefe
beefe
ceefe
bady
cady
bedy
cedy
beedy
ceedy
bafy
cafy
befy
cefy
beefy
ceefy

You are looking for the cartesian product: http://docs.python.org/library/itertools.html#itertools.product — Felix Kling, Feb 01 '12 at 18:22
@Dustin, I don't think what you want is the cartesian product, but the combinations of those strings. Keep in mind that the cartesian product is an operation between two sets `A` and `B` in which `AxB = {(a, b): a ∈ A and b ∈ B}` — lmiguelvargasf, Apr 03 '19 at 00:19

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 01 '12 at 18:25

6

for l in itertools.product(*letters):
    print ''.join(l)

answered Feb 01 '12 at 18:25

NPE

What is the use of `*` before letters? What does it do? – Vineet Kumar Doshi Aug 25 '15 at 09:24
3

Argument unpacking: *[a, b, c] is a, b, c – Hristo Vrigazov Oct 02 '16 at 14:31

1 Answers1