I have a list like this :

my_list = ['A','AC','F','AB','ADF','D','DF','C','B]

I want to find an algorithm to sort the list as this :

sorted_list = ['A','C','AC','B','AB','F','D','DF','ADF']

I wonder if anyone who is able to recognize the pattern could recommend me a recognized algorithm to solve this kind of problem. Thank you.

CodePudding user response：

The only rule I can see is that a single letter has to appear first before it can appear in a longer string.

If all the string are nodes and each single letter has a (directed) edge from it to all the strings that contain it then you end up with topological sort. But then there would be a lot of other solutions. E.g. A, B, C, D, F, AB, AC, ADF, DF would be valid too.

CodePudding user response：

I had noticed another pattern here,

step1: look from left to right and spot the first string that has more than one letter

step 2: put all possible combinations that had appeared in the first list of the found string (from step 1) and than the string itself.

step 3: redo step 1 for the next more than two latter string and insert only combination that had not appeared yet.

this is only based on one example so I cant be sure that this is the correct pattern but it works for this example.