Your comment kind of reminds me of this implementation http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Power_set#C http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Power_set#C for generating a

Your comment kind of reminds me of this implementation http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Power_set#C http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Power_set#C for generating a power set in C. The code recursively calls a function that permutes through the members of the power set and creatively constructs linked lists pointing up the call stack.