How to get all combination from multiple lists?

Question

I am not sure that my question is correct but I don't know how to explain it otherwords. So I've got some lists like

a = ['11', '12']
b = ['21', '22']
c = ['31', '32']

And i need to get something like:

result = [
    ['11', '21', '31'],
    ['11', '21', '32'],
    ['11', '22', '31'],
    ['11', '22', '32'],
    ['12', '21', '31'],
    ['12', '21', '32'],
    ['12', '22', '31'],
    ['12', '22', '32']
]

Answer 1

User itertools, combinations:

import itertools
a = ['11', '12']
b = ['21', '22']
c = ['31', '32']
list(itertools.combinations(itertools.chain(a,b,c), 3))
[('11', '12', '21'), ('11', '12', '22'), ('11', '12', '31'), ('11', '12', '32'), ('11', '21', '22'), ('11', '21', '31'), ('11', '21', '32'), ('11', '22', '31'), ('11', '22', '32'), ('11', '31', '32'), ('12', '21', '22'), ('12', '21', '31'), ('12', '21', '32'), ('12', '22', '31'), ('12', '22', '32'), ('12', '31', '32'), ('21', '22', '31'), ('21', '22', '32'), ('21', '31', '32'), ('22', '31', '32')]

or product:

list(itertools.product(a,b,c))
[('11', '21', '31'), ('11', '21', '32'), ('11', '22', '31'), ('11', '22', '32'), ('12', '21', '31'), ('12', '21', '32'), ('12', '22', '31'), ('12', '22', '32')]

Answer 2

You need itertools.product which returns cartesian product of input iterables.

>>> a = ['11', '12']
>>> b = ['21', '22']
>>> c = ['31', '32']
>>>
>>> from itertools import product
>>>
>>> list(product(a,b,c))
[('11', '21', '31'), ('11', '21', '32'), ('11', '22', '31'), ('11', '22', '32'), ('12', '21', '31'), ('12', '21', '32'), ('12', '22', '31'), ('12', '22', '32')]

And you can use a list comprehension to convert tuples to lists:

>>> [list(i) for i in product(a,b,c)]
[['11', '21', '31'], ['11', '21', '32'], ['11', '22', '31'], ['11', '22', '32'], ['12', '21', '31'], ['12', '21', '32'], ['12', '22', '31'], ['12', '22', '32']]