phparraysdependenciesfunctional-programmingsubset

Finding the subsets of an array in PHP


I have a Relational Schema with attributes (A B C D). I have a set of Functional Dependencies with me too.

Now I need to determine the closure for all the possible subsets of R's attributes. That's where I am stuck. I need to learn how to find subsets (non-repeating) in PHP.

My Array is stored like this.

$ATTRIBUTES = ('A', 'B', 'C', 'D').

so my subsets should be

$SUBSET = ('A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'AB', 'AC', AD', 'BC', 'BD', 'CD', 'ABC', 'ABD', 'BCD', 'ABCD')

The code shouldn't be something big but for some reason I can't get my head around it.


Solution

  • You wish for the power set of $attributes? That is what your question implies.

    An example can be found here (quoted for completeness)

    <?php 
    /** 
    * Returns the power set of a one dimensional array, a 2-D array. 
    * [a,b,c] -> [ [a], [b], [c], [a, b], [a, c], [b, c], [a, b, c] ]
    */ 
    function powerSet($in,$minLength = 1) { 
       $count = count($in); 
       $members = pow(2,$count); 
       $return = array(); 
       for ($i = 0; $i < $members; $i++) { 
          $b = sprintf("%0".$count."b",$i); 
          $out = array(); 
          for ($j = 0; $j < $count; $j++) { 
             if ($b{$j} == '1') $out[] = $in[$j]; 
          } 
          if (count($out) >= $minLength) { 
             $return[] = $out; 
          } 
       } 
       return $return; 
    }