Ruby - Generate all two letter words

Question

I am trying to generate a array containing all two letter word combinations.

What would be the best way to generate it.

Could someone help me out?

Answer 1

As steenslag points out, the quickest way is

('aa'..'zz').to_a

If your alphabet isn't 'a' through 'z', though, you can use Array#repeated_combination:

alphabet = %w[А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я]
alphabet.repeated_combination(2).map(&:join) # => ["AA", "AБ", ...]

Or, as Mladen points out:

alphabet.product(alphabet).map(&:join)

Note: repeated_combination is available in Ruby 1.9.2 or with require 'backports/1.9.2/array/repeated_combination' from my backports gem.

Answer 2

('aa'..'zz').to_a

Converts a Range to an Array.