PHP combinations of array elements - php

Question

I want to generate all possible combination of array elements to fill a placeholder, the placeholder size could vary.
Let say I have array $a = array(3, 2, 9, 7) and placeholder size is 6. I want to generate something like the following:
3,3,3,3,3,3
2,3,3,3,3,3
2,2,3,3,3,3
...........
...........
7,7,7,7,7,9
7,7,7,7,7,7
However (2,3,3,3,3,3) would be considered the same as (3,2,3,3,3,3) so the later one doesn't count.
Could anyone point me to the right direction? I know there is Math_Combinatorics pear package, but that one is only applicable to placeholder size <= count($a).
Edit
I am thinking that this one is similar to bits string combination though with different number base

Answer 1

I have no PHP source code for you but some sources that might help.
Some C code. Look at 2.1:
http://www.aconnect.de/friends/editions/computer/combinatoricode_g.html
Delphi code: combination without repetition of N elements without use for..to..do
Wiki article here

Answer 2

Well it took quit some time to figure this one out.
So i split the question into multiple parts
1.
I firsrt made an array with all the possible value options.
function create_all_array($placeholder, array $values)
{
if ($placeholder <= 0) {
return [];
}
$stack = [];
$values = array_unique($values);
foreach ($values as $value) {
$stack[] = [
'first' => $value,
'childs' => create_all_array($placeholder - 1, $values)
];
}
return $stack;
}
2.
Then I made a function to stransform this massive amount of data into string (no check for uniques).
function string($values, $prefix = '')
{
$stack = [];
foreach($values as $value) {
$sub_prefix = $prefix . $value['first'];
if (empty($value['childs'])) {
$stack[$sub_prefix] = (int)$sub_prefix;
} else {
$stack = array_merge($stack, string($value['childs'], $sub_prefix));
}
}
return $stack;
}
3.
Then the hard part came. Check for duplicates. This was harder than expected, but found some good anser to it and refactored it for my use.
function has_duplicate($string, $items)
{
$explode = str_split ($string);
foreach($items as $item) {
$item_explode = str_split($item);
sort($explode);
$string = implode('',$explode);
sort($item_explode);
$item = implode($item_explode);
if ($string == $item) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
4.
The last step was to combine the intel into a new funciton :P
function unique_string($placeholder, array $values)
{
$stack = string(create_all_array($placeholder, $values));
$check_stack = [];
foreach($stack as $key => $item) {
if (has_duplicate($item, $check_stack)) {
unset($stack[$key]);
}
$check_stack[] = $item;
}
return $stack;
}
Now you can use it simple as followed
unique_string(3 /* amount of dept */, [1,2,3] /* keys */);
Ps the code is based for PHP5.4+, to convert to lower you need to change the [] to array() but I love the new syntax so sorry :P