# How to return elements of a given length in a symmetric group using Sage?

Let $S_n$ be the symmetric group over $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$. How to return elements of length $m$ in $S_n$ using Sage? I try to find such function in Sage but didn't find one. Thank you very much.

Edit: $S_n$ is the Coxeter group of type $A$ generated by $s_1=(12), \ldots, s_{n-1}=(n-1,n)$. The length of an element $w \in S_n$ is the least number of simple reflections $s_i$ occurring in any expression for $w$.

• What do you mean by "length"? – Igor Rivin Jan 23 '17 at 14:42
• @Igor Rivin, I will edit the post. – Jianrong Li Jan 23 '17 at 14:44
• It is not clear what you mean with length, but one way to find out is to go to findstat.org/StatisticFinder/Permutations, enter a few values and click the search button. Incindentally, you're chances of finding sage code there are quite good, too. – Martin Rubey Jan 23 '17 at 14:45

You can enumerate words of a given length in any Coxeter group using the function elements_of_length. Here is an example of using this for a Coxeter group I studied recently:

sage: CM = CoxeterMatrix([[1,2,-1,-1,2],[2,1,2,-1,-1],[-1,2,1,2,-1],[-1,-1,2,1,2],[2,-1,-1,2,1]])
sage: G = CoxeterGroup(CM, base_ring=ZZ)
sage: G.elements_of_length(3)
<generator object _elements_of_depth_iterator_rec at 0x1af3f0eb0>


The returned object is an iterator. So you can do things like

sage: for g in G.elements_of_length(1): print G

• thank you very much. Your method solved the problem. But when the group is very large, for example, $S_{16}$. It will take a long time to compute G = CoxeterGroup(CM, base_ring=ZZ). Is it possible to list the elements of length $m$ directly? – Jianrong Li Jan 23 '17 at 15:13
• Lehmer codes with given sum might be quick to generate. – Martin Rubey Jan 23 '17 at 15:25
• @Martin Rubey, thank you very much. Are there some software for Lehmer codes? – Jianrong Li Jan 23 '17 at 15:32
• doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/combinat/sage/combinat/… – Martin Rubey Jan 24 '17 at 9:01