Saturday 6 September 2008

Tips and tricks 1: Generating all combinations

Although Numberator is typically used to generate random numbers and codes it can also be used to generate all possible combinations of any set of characters. For example, you might want to generate a list of all the possible combinations that the characters A to Z can produce in four character codes or a list of all the binary combinations of eight bits. Generating such exhaustive lists is quick and easy with Numberator.


To generate all possible combinations of a set of characters:

  1. Type the characters into the allowable characters field

  2. Set the code length to the number of characters that you want to appear in combination

Numberator will now display the maximum number of possible codes in the panel at the top right of the page. This is the number of different combinations that can be produced by the specified characters.

  1. Type the maximum number of possible codes into the number of codes required field

  2. Click the continue button to generate all possible combinations

As an illustrative example of what can be achieved with the free subscription to Numberator, the following steps will generate all binary combinations of eight bits:

  1. Type 01 into the list of allowable characters

  2. Set the code length to eight characters

Numberator will indicate that there are 256 possible combinations of the characters 0 and 1 in codes eight characters in length.

  1. Type 256 into the number of codes required field

  2. Click the continue button and download your results

You will see that Numberator has generated all binary numbers from 00000000 to 11111111 without omission or repetition. If you checked the random output box they will appear in a random order but they will otherwise appear in strictly ascending numerical order.