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2 points by Darmani 5890 days ago | link | parent

May give you a few ideas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permutation_group


1 point by cchooper 5890 days ago | link

Ah yes, cycle notation!

  ; convert a cycle into transpositions
  (def trans (cycle (o first nil))
    (if (no cycle) nil
        (~cdr cycle) (list:list cycle.0 first)
        (cons (list cycle.0 cycle.1)
              (trans (cdr cycle) 
                     (if first first cycle.0)))))

  ; permute a list using a list of disjoint cycles
  (def permute (cycles l)
    (with (ts (apply join (map trans cycles))
           ret (copy l))
      (map [= (ret (- _.1 1)) (l (- _.0 1))] ts)
      ret))

  (permute '((1 2 3) (4 5)) '(a b c d e))
  => (c a b e d)

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2 points by shader 5889 days ago | link

hmm. I think that cycle notation is sometimes shorter than just stating the final positions, but only rarely.

How about a function that does:

  >(reorder '(2 5 4 1 3) '(a b c d e))
  '(b e d a c)
That makes more sense in many cases. But having a function that does permutations using cycle notation is probably also useful.

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