Creating combinations using arrays

DreamT has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi,
I have a product feed with a number of properties (size, shape, colour, etc.). Each property has values (size has S,M,L etc., shape has circle, square etc., colour has red,white, blue, etc.) I.e., both the properties and values are variable.

Based on these I want to create all possible combinations, for example "Blue circle size S","Blue square size S" etc, but I don't know how to do it. For now I'm storing in an HoA:

my %Properties;
...

# Outer loop, per $property_id
# Inner loop, per value of property:

push @{ $Properties->{$property_id} }, 
{
   'Value' => $value,
   'Price' => $price,                    
};
[download]

Ideally, I want to loop the Properties-hash and create the combinations from that. I know how to do it in a static fashion (Defining a number of arrays and looping them), but how to do it dynamically?

Comment on Creating combinations using arrays Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Creating combinations using arrays by Kenosis (Priest) on Mar 05, 2013 at 16:47 UTC
You'll find a practially-identical question here: Multiple Permutation handling. Is this is a course assignment?	[reply]
Re^2: Creating combinations using arrays by DreamT (Pilgrim) on Mar 05, 2013 at 17:06 UTC
Thank you! No, this is a real-world problem that needs to be solved :-)	[reply]
Re: Creating combinations using arrays by blue_cowdawg (Monsignor) on Mar 05, 2013 at 16:30 UTC
Based on these I want to create all possible combinations, Pretty simple actually... `my @colors = qw/ *insert colors here* /; my @sizes = qw/ ** insert sizes here / ; my @shapes= qw/ insert shapes here */; my @combos=(); foreach my $color(@colors){ foreach my $size(@sizes) { foreach my $shape(@shapes) { push @combos,{ color => $color, size => $size, shape => $shape}; } } }` [download] Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional Peter -at- Berghold -dot- Net; AOL IM redcowdawg Yahoo IM: blue_cowdawg	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Creating combinations using arrays by DreamT (Pilgrim) on Mar 05, 2013 at 16:33 UTC
Well, the problem is that i don't know which properties that are available at the time, so instead of @colors, @sizes, @shapes, I need something more dynamic.	[reply]
Re^3: Creating combinations using arrays by LanX (Saint) on Mar 05, 2013 at 23:07 UTC
> Well, the problem is that i don't know which properties that are available at the time, so instead of @colors, @sizes, @shapes, I need something more dynamic. So use a recursive function! `rec_for([1..3],["a".."c"],[10..13]); my @tuple; sub rec_for { if (@_) { my $a_list = shift; for my $x (@$a_list) { push @tuple, $x; rec_for(@_); pop @tuple; } } else { print "tuple: @tuple\n"; } }` [download] `/usr/bin/perl -w /home/lanx/B/PL/PM/recursive_for.pl tuple: 1 a 10 tuple: 1 a 11 tuple: 1 a 12 tuple: 1 a 13 tuple: 1 b 10 tuple: 1 b 11 ...` [download] Cheers Rolf UPDATE if you need the result in a %hash, just alter the routine to process key-value pairs `rec_for(a=>[1..3],b=>["a".."c"],c=>[10..13]);` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]

UPDATE