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Asked: 2026-05-25T06:49:35+00:00

I’m trying to create a generator function: def combinations(iterable, r, maxGapSize): maxGapSizePlusOne = maxGapSize+1

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I’m trying to create a generator function:

def combinations(iterable, r, maxGapSize):
    maxGapSizePlusOne = maxGapSize+1

    pool = tuple(iterable)
    n = len(pool)
    if r > n:
        return
    indices = list(range(r))

    while True:
        for i in reversed(range(r)):        
            if indices[i] != i + n - r:     
                break
        else:
            return

        indices[i] += 1
        for j in range(i+1, r):
            indices[j] = indices[j-1] + 1

        previous = indices[0]
        for k in indices[1:]:
            if k-previous>maxGapSizePlusOne:
                isGapTooBig = True
                break
            previous = k
        else:
            isGapTooBig = False

        if not isGapTooBig:
            print(indices)


combinations(("Aa","Bbb","Ccccc","Dd","E","Ffff",),2,1)

I’m printing out the indices that I wish to use to select the elements from the argument called ‘iterable’ for debugging purposes. This gives me:

[0, 2]
[1, 2]
[1, 3]
[2, 3]
[2, 4]
[3, 4]
[3, 5]
[4, 5]

Ignoring [0,1] as this is produced elsewhere…

This is exactly what I want but I’m guessing my code it over complicated and inefficient. The size of iterable is likely to be in the thousands and it’s likely maxGapSize < 5.

Any tips to help me do this better?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Much of your code looks exactly like the Python code for itertools.combination. The CPython implementation of itertools.combination is written in C. The documentation linked to above shows Python-equivalent code.

    You can speed up the function by simply using itertools.combination instead of using the Python-equivalent code:

    import itertools as it
def mycombinations(iterable, r, maxGapSize):
    maxGapSizePlusOne = maxGapSize+1    
    for indices in it.combinations(range(len(iterable)),r):
        previous = indices[0]
        for k in indices[1:]:
            if k-previous>maxGapSizePlusOne:                    
                break
            previous = k
        else:
            yield indices   
            # print(indices)

    You can use timeit to compare the relative speed of alternate implementations this way:

    original version:

    % python -mtimeit -s'import test' 'list(test.combinations(("Aa","Bbb","Ccccc","Dd","E","Ffff",),2,1))'
10000 loops, best of 3: 63.9 usec per loop

    versus

    using itertools.combination:

    % python -mtimeit -s'import test' 'list(test.mycombinations(("Aa","Bbb","Ccccc","Dd","E","Ffff",),2,1))'
100000 loops, best of 3: 17.2 usec per loop

    The code above produces all combinations, including the initial combination, range(len(iterable)). I think it is more beautiful to leave it that way. But if you really want to remove the first combination, you could use

    def mycombinations(iterable, r, maxGapSize):
    ...
    comb=it.combinations(range(len(iterable)),r)
    next(comb)
    for indices in comb:

    By the way, the function combinations does not really depend on iterable. It only depends on the length of iterable. Therefore, it would be better to make the call signature

    def combinations(length, r, maxGapSize):
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