combinations

Returns combinations of a set of numeric or cell vectors (uses a memory-efficient algorithm)

C = COMBINATIONS(V1, V2, V3, ...Vn) returns the set of combinations formed by taking the first element from vector V1, the second element from vector V2, the third from vector V3, and so on.
C is a KxN matrix, where K is the total
number of combinations, and N is the number
of (non-empty) input vectors.

V1, V2, ... Vn can be either numeric or cell arrays.

C = COMBINATIONS(V1, V2, V3, ...Vn, CLASSNAME) specifies that all the numeric vectors have numeric type CLASSNAME (e.g., 'int8', 'single').

Examples:

c = combinations(1:5, 1:2)
c = combinations(1:5, 1:2, 'int8')
c = combinations(0:1,0:1,0:1,0:1,0:1,0:1,0:1,0:1,0:1,'int8');

c = combinations({'aa','bb'}, 1:3)
c = combinations({'aa','bb'}, {[1 2] [4 5 6]}, [true false])

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MOTIVATION (in the spirit of reducing FileEx redundancy and clutter)

There are other FileExchange entries for calculating combinations:
ALLCOMB (Filex# 10064)
SETPROD (FileEx# 5898)
CARTPROD (FileEx# 5475)

This implementation differs in two ways.

1) It allows combination of arbitrary cell arrays, and mixtures of cell and numeric arrays.

2) It use a memory-efficient algorithm that does not use intermediate matrices; furthermore, when CLASSNAME is specified, the specified numeric datatype is used consistently (there is no internal conversion from 'double'). This efficiency is relevant when the input consists of many small vectors or a few very large vectors.