Question

I have written the script below to generate all possible permutations of a specified set of characters.

Is there a way to efficiently do this while allowing the length to be specified at runtime?

DECLARE @string NVARCHAR(MAX)
SELECT @string = '0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';

DECLARE @Chars TABLE (
    C CHAR(1) PRIMARY KEY
)

DECLARE @N INT 
SET @N = 1 
WHILE @N <= LEN(@string) BEGIN
    INSERT @Chars (
        C
    ) VALUES (
        SUBSTRING(@string, @N, 1)
    )

    SET @N = @N + 1
END

--SELECT * FROM @Chars


SELECT
    A.C + B.C + C.C
FROM @Chars A, @Chars B, @Chars C
ORDER BY
    A.C,
    B.C,
    C.C

Answer 1

After receiving comments related to the number of possible permutations, I realized that there should be very tight limits on the length of the character set as well as the specified length.

Given that the allowable length would be extremely small, I see no harm in using a condition in my script… like this:

DECLARE
    @string NVARCHAR(40), --limit the length of the character set to 40
    @length INT -- the limit for this is in a validation check below

SELECT
    @string = '0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ',
    @length = 2



IF (@length < 1 OR @length > 4) BEGIN
    RAISERROR('Invalid length specified. This function only supports lengths from 1 to 4', 16, 1)
END



DECLARE @Chars TABLE (
    C CHAR(1) PRIMARY KEY
)

;WITH numbers AS (
    SELECT TOP(LEN(@string)) number
    FROM master..spt_values
    WHERE type = 'P'
    AND number != 0
)

INSERT @Chars (
    C
)
SELECT
    C = SUBSTRING(@string, number, 1)
FROM numbers


IF (@length = 1) BEGIN
    SELECT C FROM @Chars ORDER BY C
END ELSE IF (@length = 2) BEGIN
    SELECT A.C + B.C
    FROM @Chars A, @Chars B
    ORDER BY A.C, B.C
END ELSE IF (@length = 3) BEGIN
    SELECT A.C + B.C + C.C
    FROM @Chars A, @Chars B, @Chars C
    ORDER BY A.C, B.C, C.C
END ELSE IF (@length = 4) BEGIN
    SELECT A.C + B.C + C.C + D.C
    FROM @Chars A, @Chars B, @Chars C, @Chars D
    ORDER BY A.C, B.C, C.C, D.C
END