Question

How to shuffle the elements in the pairs?
The program below, generate all possible pairs and later shuffle the pairs.
e.g. possible pairs before shuffle is ab,ac,ae,af..etc shuffled to ac,ae,af,ab…etc

How to make it not only shuffled in pairs but within the elements in the pair itself?
e.g. instead of ab, ac, how can I make ba, ac ?

String[] pictureFile   = {"a.jpg","b.jpg","c.jpg","d.jpg","e.jpg","f.jpg","g.jpg"};
    List <String>  pic1= Arrays.asList(pictureFile);
    ...
ListGenerator pic2= new ListGenerator(pic1);

ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> pic2= new ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>>();


public class ListGenerator {
    public ListGenerator(List<String> pic1) {
     int size = pic1.size();

     // create a list of all possible combinations
     for(int i = 0 ; i < size ; i++) {
        for(int j = (i+1) ; j < size ; j++) {
           ArrayList<Integer> temp = new ArrayList<Integer>();
           temp.add(i);
           temp.add(j);
              pic2.add(temp);
            }
        }
      Collections.shuffle(pic2);
    }

    //This method return the shuffled list
    public ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> getList()  {
         return pic2;
    }
}

Answer 1

You just have to shuffle the temp list before you add it to pic2. Here’s the fixed code (note that I turned the pic2 variable into a field of the ListGenerator class and renamed it to result)

  String[] pictureFile   = {"a.jpg","b.jpg","c.jpg","d.jpg","e.jpg","f.jpg","g.jpg"};
  List <String>  pic1= Arrays.asList(pictureFile);
      ...
  ListGenerator pic2= new ListGenerator(pic1);

  public class ListGenerator {

     ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> result = new ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>>();

     public ListGenerator(List<String> pic1) {
        int size = pic1.size();

        // create a list of all possible combinations
        for(int i = 0 ; i < size ; i++) {
           for(int j = (i+1) ; j < size ; j++) {
              ArrayList<Integer> temp = new ArrayList<Integer>();
              temp.add(i);
              temp.add(j);

              Collections.shuffle(temp);
              result.add(temp);
           }
        }
        Collections.shuffle(result);
     }

     //This method return the shuffled list
     public ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> getList()  {
        return result;
     }
  }

However this is just the first step towards a solution. Currently, each pair will contain integers in the range [0..size-1] so your pairs look like this: <0,3>, <1,2>, etc. What you probably want is to get a pairs that are two-letter String such as: "ab", "dc", etc. In this version I renamed getList() to getPairs() which convey its meaning better. Also, I made the constructor of ListGenerator accept an array of characters so you just need to call it with your desired characters, as follows:

  List<String> pairs = new ListGenerator('a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g').getPairs();

And here is ListGenerator it self:

  public class ListGenerator {

     ArrayList<String> result = new ArrayList<String>();

     public ListGenerator(char...  letters) {
        int size = letters.length;

        // create a list of all possible combinations
        for(int i = 0 ; i < size ; i++) {
           for(int j = (i+1) ; j < size ; j++) {
              ArrayList<Character> temp = new ArrayList<Character>();
              temp.add(letters[i]);
              temp.add(letters[j]);

              Collections.shuffle(temp);
              result.add("" + temp[0] + temp[1]);
           }
        }
        Collections.shuffle(result);
     }

     //This method return the shuffled list
     public ArrayList<ArrayList<Integer>> getPairs()  {
        return result;
     }
  }