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I have a set of 1000 items and want to go through all subsets of size 499 of these elements.

In python library I will use “yield” function so I generate the sets rather than cause overflow, but I am wondering how long will I have to wait to get each subset (and perform no operations for the time being) will it be days? How many?

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  • $\begingroup$ This will take almost certainly a long time. But without knowing your machine specs and code there is no way to give a good estimate. $\endgroup$
    – ttnick
    Commented Sep 11 at 12:23
  • $\begingroup$ We're not a coding site, so questions about what Python will do is likely off-topic here. If you want to ask about some concept or algorithm, or request an algorithm that can generate subsets with low delay between each subsequent subset, that is on-topic here. $\endgroup$
    – D.W. ♦
    Commented Sep 11 at 18:16
  • $\begingroup$ You are probably in a position and able to assess this analytically. Then again, experimenting may be nore fun and no less instructive: For how big a set does it take 5 seconds to generate all subsets half the size-1? How much time for sets 2 smaller, 2, 4, 6… bigger? Can you fit a function? $\endgroup$
    – greybeard
    Commented Sep 12 at 20:20
  • $\begingroup$ There are very roughly about 2^1000 / 1000 such subsets, so you won’t finish within the lifetime of the universe enumerating the subsets. $\endgroup$
    – gnasher729
    Commented Sep 21 at 19:30

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