Question

I’m not sure if permutations is the correct word for this. I want to given a set of n vectors (i.e. [1,2],[3,4] and [2,3]) permute them all and get an output of

[1,3,2],[1,3,3],[1,4,2],[1,4,3],[2,3,2] etc.

Is there an operation in R that will do this?

Answer 1

This is a useful case for storing the vectors in a list and using do.call() to arrange for an appropriate function call for you. expand.grid() is the standard function you want. But so you don’t have to type out or name individual vectors, try:

> l <- list(a = 1:2, b = 3:4, c = 2:3)
> do.call(expand.grid, l)
  a b c
1 1 3 2
2 2 3 2
3 1 4 2
4 2 4 2
5 1 3 3
6 2 3 3
7 1 4 3
8 2 4 3

However, for all my cleverness, it turns out that expand.grid() accepts a list:

> expand.grid(l)
  a b c
1 1 3 2
2 2 3 2
3 1 4 2
4 2 4 2
5 1 3 3
6 2 3 3
7 1 4 3
8 2 4 3