Loops to create nested loops

Question

Is there a way to use a loop to create more nested loops? E.g. Doing this

for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++)
            {
                //Do stuff
                for (int ii = 0; ii < iterations; ii++)
                {
                    // Do stuff
                    for (int iii = 0; iii < iterations; iii++)
                    {
                        //Do Stuff
                    }
                }
            }

but allowing the user to change how many nested loops you want during run-time.

This allows me to know the depth I am on, while also resetting the "i" counter back to 0, allowing me to do the exact same thing over again, but with a different depth value.

Answer 1

There is a way! You can solve such problems with recursion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursion_%28computer_science%29).

In your case it would look something like this (pseudocode):

function doStuff(int depth) {
    if(depth > USER_DEFINED_DEPTH)
        return;
    //Do stuff
    doStuff(depth + 1);
}

doStuff(0);

Answer 2

You've gotten some good answers here and on SO to your questions, but you're missing a non-recursive solution. Here's how I went about trying to solve the problem (Note that it is currently slightly broken!):

private static IEnumerable<string> GetPaths(int maxDepth, int iterations, string root)
{
    var depths = Enumerable.Range(0, maxDepth);
    var widths = Enumerable.Range(0, iterations);

    var thing = depths.Select(x => Path.Combine(
        depths
            .Reverse()
            .Skip(x + 1)
            .Select(y => y.ToString())
        .Reverse()
        .ToArray()));

    return thing.SelectMany(x => widths.Select(y => Path.Combine(root, x, y.ToString())));
}

What this essentially does is create all the sets of combinations by joining collections, and then combines them into paths. The result is that every depth is covered, without any chance of blowing the stack. There is a bug currently: the variable thing (which should be renamed, should you take this route) contains (with an input of 10, 10, "temp" the paths:

0\1\2\3\4\5\6\7\8
0\1\2\3\4\5\6\7
0\1\2\3\4\5\6
0\1\2\3\4\5
0\1\2\3\4
0\1\2\3
0\1\2
0\1
0
string.Empty

I'll leave it to you to figure out how to fix it, but it's very simple.