how to write iterative algorithm for generate all subsets of a set?

Question

I wrote recursive backtracking algorithm for finding all subsets of a given set.

void backtracke(int* a, int k, int n)
{
    if (k == n)
    {
        for(int i = 1; i <=k; ++i)
        {
            if (a[i] == true)
            {
                std::cout << i << " ";
            }
        }
        std::cout << std::endl;
        return;
    }
    bool c[2];
    c[0] = false;
    c[1] = true;
    ++k;
    for(int i = 0; i < 2; ++i)
    {       
        a[k] = c[i];
        backtracke(a, k, n);
        a[k] = INT_MAX;
    }
}

now we have to write the same algorithm but in an iterative form, how to do it ?

Answer 1

You can use the binary counter approach. Any unique binary string of length n represents a unique subset of a set of n elements. If you start with 0 and end with 2^n-1, you cover all possible subsets. The counter can be easily implemented in an iterative manner.

The code in Java:

  public static void printAllSubsets(int[] arr) {
    byte[] counter = new byte[arr.length];

    while (true) {
      // Print combination
      for (int i = 0; i < counter.length; i++) {
        if (counter[i] != 0)
          System.out.print(arr[i] + " ");
      }
      System.out.println();

      // Increment counter
      int i = 0;
      while (i < counter.length && counter[i] == 1)
        counter[i++] = 0;
      if (i == counter.length)
        break;
      counter[i] = 1;
    }
  }

Note that in Java one can use BitSet, which makes the code really shorter, but I used a byte array to illustrate the process better.