python - Generating all unique pair permutations

Question

I need to generate all possible pairings, but with the constraint that a particular pairing only occurs once in the results. So for example:

import itertools

for perm in itertools.permutations(range(9)):
    print zip(perm[::2], perm[1::2])

generates all possible two-paired permutations; here's a small subset of the output:

...
[(8, 4), (7, 6), (5, 3), (0, 2)]
[(8, 4), (7, 6), (5, 3), (1, 0)]
[(8, 4), (7, 6), (5, 3), (1, 2)]
[(8, 4), (7, 6), (5, 3), (2, 0)]
[(8, 4), (7, 6), (5, 3), (2, 1)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 3), (4, 6)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 3), (4, 7)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 3), (6, 4)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 3), (6, 7)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 3), (7, 4)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 3), (7, 6)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 4), (3, 6)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 4), (3, 7)]
[(8, 5), (0, 1), (2, 4), (6, 3)]
...

How do I further filter it so that I only ever see (8,4) once (throughout all of the filtered permutations), and (8,5) only once, and (0,1) only once, and (4,7) only once, etc.?

Basically I want the permutations such that each two-element pairing happens only once.

I'll bet there's an additional itertool that would solve this but I'm not expert enough to know what it is.

Update: Gareth Rees is correct -- I was completely unaware that I was trying to solve the round-robin problem. I have an additional constraint which is that what I'm doing is grouping people for pair-programming exercises. Thus, if I have an odd number of people, I need to create a group of three to include an odd person for each exercise. My current thinking is to (1) make an even number of people by adding in an invisible person. Then, after the pairing, find the person paired with the invisible person and randomly place them into an existing group to form a team of three. However, I wonder if there isn't already an algorithm or adjustment to round-robin that does this in a better way.

Update 2: Theodros' solution produces exactly the right result without the inelegant futzing about I describe above. Everyone's been amazingly helpful.

Answer 1

Pass the list to set to get make sure each tuple only exists once.

>>> from itertools import permutations
>>> set( [ zip( perm[::2], perm[1::2] ) for perm in permutations( range( 9 ) ) ] )
set([(7, 3), (4, 7), (1, 3), (4, 8), (5, 6), (2, 8), (8, 0), (3, 2), (2, 1), (6, 2), (1, 6), (5, 1), (3, 7), (2, 5), (8, 5), (0, 3), (5, 8), (4, 0), (1, 2), (3, 8), (3, 1), (6, 7), (2, 0), (8, 1), (7, 6), (3, 0), (6, 3), (1, 5), (7, 2), (3, 6), (0, 4), (8, 6), (3, 5), (4, 1), (6, 4), (5, 4), (2, 6), (8, 2), (2, 7), (7, 1), (4, 5), (8, 3), (1, 4), (6, 0), (7, 5), (2, 3), (0, 7), (8, 7), (4, 2), (1, 0), (0, 8), (6, 5), (4, 6), (0, 1), (5, 3), (7, 0), (6, 8), (3, 4), (6, 1), (5, 7), (5, 2), (0, 2), (7, 4), (0, 6), (1, 8), (4, 3), (1, 7), (0, 5), (5, 0), (7, 8), (2, 4), (8, 4)])

From your description you want each of the 2-tuple permutations of the range( 9 ) the above should give you all of the various permutations, based on your code. But, this is pretty inefficient.

However you can further simplify your code by doing the following:

>>> list( permutations( range( 9 ), 2 ) )
[(0, 1), (0, 2), (0, 3), (0, 4), (0, 5), (0, 6), (0, 7), (0, 8), (1, 0), (1, 2), (1, 3), (1, 4), (1, 5), (1, 6), (1, 7), (1, 8), (2, 0), (2, 1), (2, 3), (2, 4), (2, 5), (2, 6), (2, 7), (2, 8), (3, 0), (3, 1), (3, 2), (3, 4), (3, 5), (3, 6), (3, 7), (3, 8), (4, 0), (4, 1), (4, 2), (4, 3), (4, 5), (4, 6), (4, 7), (4, 8), (5, 0), (5, 1), (5, 2), (5, 3), (5, 4), (5, 6), (5, 7), (5, 8), (6, 0), (6, 1), (6, 2), (6, 3), (6, 4), (6, 5), (6, 7), (6, 8), (7, 0), (7, 1), (7, 2), (7, 3), (7, 4), (7, 5), (7, 6), (7, 8), (8, 0), (8, 1), (8, 2), (8, 3), (8, 4), (8, 5), (8, 6), (8, 7)]

The method permutations also takes a length argument that will allow you to specify the length of the tuple returned. So, you were using the correct itertool provided function, but missed the tuple length parameter.

itertools.permutations documentation