Generating all distinct partitions of a number

Question

I am trying to write a C code to generate all possible partitions (into 2 or more parts) with distinct elements of a given number. The sum of all the numbers of a given partition should be equal to the given number. For example, for input n = 6, all possible partitions having 2 or more elements with distinct elements are:

• 1, 5
• 1, 2, 3
• 2, 4

I think a recursive approach should work, but I am unable to take care of the added constraint of distinct elements. A pseudo code or a sample code in C/C++/Java would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Edit: If it makes things easier, I can ignore the restriction of the partitions having atleast 2 elements. This will allow the number itself to be added to the list (eg, 6 itself will be a trivial but valid partition).

Answer 1

You don't need recursion at all. The list of numbers is essentially a stack, and by iterating in order you ensure no duplicates.

Here's a version which shows what I mean (you tagged this C, so I wrote it in C. In C++ you could use a dynamic container with push and pop, and tidy this up considerably).

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

void partition(int part)
{
int *parts;
int *ptr;
int i;
int idx = 0;
int tot = 0;
int cur = 1;
int max = 1;

    while((max * (max + 1)) / 2 <= part) max++;

    ptr = parts = malloc(sizeof(int) * max);

    for(;;) {
        if((tot += *ptr++ = cur++) < part) continue;

        if(tot == part) {
            for(i = 0 ; i < ptr-parts ; i++) {printf("%d ",parts[i]);}
            printf("\n");
        }

        do {
            if(ptr == parts) {free(parts); return;}
            tot -= cur = *--ptr;
        } while(++cur + tot > part);
    }
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    partition(6);
    return 0;
}