different results in bing chat console and pycharm?

Question

when I run this code in pycharm, I get different results than when it is run in bing chat.

in pycharm I get

[['abc'], ['a', 'bc'], ['a', 'b', 'c']]

but in bing chat I get

[['a', 'b', 'c'], ['a', 'bc'], ['ab', 'c'], ['abc']]

My pycharm interpreter(3.11) and decoding(utf-8) are the same as the bing chat.

the code is

def get_all_sublists(char_list):
    if not char_list:
        return [[]]
    rest = get_all_sublists(char_list[1:])
    result = rest + [[char_list[0]] + x for x in rest]
    return result

char_list = ["a","b","c","ab","bc","abc"]
all_sublists = get_all_sublists(char_list)
matching_sublists = [x for x in all_sublists if ''.join(x) == char_list[-1]]
print(matching_sublists)

Answer 1

The difference in the results is due to the order of the sublists in the rest variable. The get_all_sublists function uses recursion to split the list into two parts: the first element and the rest of the list. It then calls itself on the rest of the list and adds the first element to each sublist in the result. The order of the sublists in the result depends on how the recursion is implemented.

In PyCharm, the recursion is implemented using a stack, which means that the last sublist added to the result is the first one to be returned. This results in a reversed order of the sublists in the rest variable. For example, when char_list is ["a","b","c"], the rest variable is [[], ['c'], ['b'], ['b', 'c'], ['a'], ['a', 'c'], ['a', 'b'], ['a', 'b', 'c']]. This explains why you get [['abc'], ['a', 'bc'], ['a', 'b', 'c']] as the output.

In Bing chat, the recursion is implemented using a queue, which means that the first sublist added to the result is the first one to be returned. This results in a preserved order of the sublists in the rest variable. For example, when char_list is ["a","b","c"], the rest variable is [[], ['a'], ['b'], ['a', 'b'], ['c'], ['a', 'c'], ['b', 'c'], ['a', 'b', 'c']]. This explains why you get [['a', 'b', 'c'], ['a', 'bc'], ['ab', 'c'], ['abc']] as the output.