How to get all subsets of a set? (powerset)

Question

Given a set

{0, 1, 2, 3}

How can I produce the subsets:

[set(),
 {0},
 {1},
 {2},
 {3},
 {0, 1},
 {0, 2},
 {0, 3},
 {1, 2}         


        

Answer 1

I have found the following algorithm very clear and simple:

def get_powerset(some_list):
    """Returns all subsets of size 0 - len(some_list) for some_list"""
    if len(some_list) == 0:
        return [[]]

    subsets = []
    first_element = some_list[0]
    remaining_list = some_list[1:]
    # Strategy: get all the subsets of remaining_list. For each
    # of those subsets, a full subset list will contain both
    # the original subset as well as a version of the subset
    # that contains first_element
    for partial_subset in get_powerset(remaining_list):
        subsets.append(partial_subset)
        subsets.append(partial_subset[:] + [first_element])

    return subsets

Another way one can generate the powerset is by generating all binary numbers that have n bits. As a power set the amount of number with n digits is 2 ^ n. The principle of this algorithm is that an element could be present or not in a subset as a binary digit could be one or zero but not both.

def power_set(items):
    N = len(items)
    # enumerate the 2 ** N possible combinations
    for i in range(2 ** N):
        combo = []
        for j in range(N):
            # test bit jth of integer i
            if (i >> j) % 2 == 1:
                combo.append(items[j])
        yield combo

I found both algorithms when I was taking MITx: 6.00.2x Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science, and I consider it is one of the easiest algorithms to understand I have seen.

Answer 2

def findsubsets(s, n): 
    return list(itertools.combinations(s, n)) 

def allsubsets(s) :
    a = []
    for x in range(1,len(s)+1):
        a.append(map(set,findsubsets(s,x)))      
    return a

Answer 3

I just wanted to provide the most comprehensible solution, the anti code-golf version.

from itertools import combinations

l = ["x", "y", "z", ]

def powerset(items):
    combo = []
    for r in range(len(items) + 1):
        #use a list to coerce a actual list from the combinations generator
        combo.append(list(combinations(items,r)))
    return combo

l_powerset = powerset(l)

for i, item in enumerate(l_powerset):
    print "All sets of length ", i
    print item

---

The results

All sets of length 0

[()]

All sets of length 1

[('x',), ('y',), ('z',)]

All sets of length 2

[('x', 'y'), ('x', 'z'), ('y', 'z')]

All sets of length 3

[('x', 'y', 'z')]

For more see the itertools docs, also the wikipedia entry on power sets

Answer 4

Perhaps the question is getting old, but I hope my code will help someone.

def powSet(set):
    if len(set) == 0:
       return [[]]
    return addtoAll(set[0],powSet(set[1:])) + powSet(set[1:])

def addtoAll(e, set):
   for c in set:
       c.append(e)
   return set

Answer 5

If you're looking for a quick answer, I just searched "python power set" on google and came up with this: Python Power Set Generator

Here's a copy-paste from the code in that page:

def powerset(seq):
    """
    Returns all the subsets of this set. This is a generator.
    """
    if len(seq) <= 1:
        yield seq
        yield []
    else:
        for item in powerset(seq[1:]):
            yield [seq[0]]+item
            yield item

This can be used like this:

 l = [1, 2, 3, 4]
 r = [x for x in powerset(l)]

Now r is a list of all the elements you wanted, and can be sorted and printed:

r.sort()
print r
[[], [1], [1, 2], [1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3, 4], [1, 2, 4], [1, 3], [1, 3, 4], [1, 4], [2], [2, 3], [2, 3, 4], [2, 4], [3], [3, 4], [4]]

Answer 6

def powerset(some_set):
    res = [(a,b) for a in some_set for b in some_set]
    return res