This imaginary problem involves a vector of length 5, with each value to be selected from a unique range of values.
A real-world example might include 5 different single-digit combination locks.
How many different ways could I lock a single gate, assuming that I can use any number of locks?
Assuming that each lock takes values ([1-3], [1-3], [1-3], [1-3], [1-3])
There would be 3^5 == 243
possible combinations. But I'm also interested in calculating the total number of combinations possible by using subsets of the 5 locks, so adding the solution for each combination of four locks, each combination of 3 locks and so on. The solution would also ideally be generalisable so that each list of values can differ i.e. ([1-2], [1-10], [A-C] ... )
Does there exist a mathematical solution to this problem?
edit:
In the main, the question is about a general purpose mathematical solution. For example, to find the number of combination of a set of length (3), one uses 3!
ie. 6 combinations of [1,2,3].
I was wondering if there exists a general purpose solution to the above scenario. If not, I would think it could be possible to program something to recurse over the possibilities, which I guess is why I decided to post it here first as my search for a mathematical solution came up empty handed.
Some examples of inputs and outputs as requested:
input = [A,B,C] [1,2,3,4,5] [G,H]
output combinations are all possible combinations of those three lists, without needing to sample all three lists. Note combinations, hence [A1G] == [G1A]
i.e. (this is not all the combinations): A B C A1 A2 A3 ... C4 C5 A1G A1H A2G A2H ... C5G C5H ... 1 2 3 4 5 1G 1H . . 5G 5H .. G H