http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=805506


in reply to x objects in y containers where all objects are used

The most straight-forward solution I can think of is to generate all ways to assign each object with a container number. This will generate some assignments where some container does not receive any objects, so you will have to filter them out.

Using Algorithm::NestedLoops, that would look something like:

my $containers = ... my $objects = ... NestedLoops( [ (sub{ [0 .. $containers-1] }) x $objects ], sub { my @assignment = @_; my @bins; push @{ $bins[$assignment[$_]] }, $_ for 0 .. $objects-1; ## @bins now contains the groupings ## filter out if one of the bins is empty } );
There is probably a more direct way to do this, so that you can cleverly iterate over just the assignments that use each bin. But I haven't discovered it yet in the short time that I've been thinking about your post.

blokhead