How do I compute all possibilities for an array of numbers/bits (in python, or any language for that matter)

In Python, use itertools for stuff like this

from itertools import product
for i in product([0,1], repeat=5): 
    print i

Yields:

(0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
(0, 0, 0, 0, 1)
(0, 0, 0, 1, 0)
(0, 0, 0, 1, 1)
(0, 0, 1, 0, 0)
etc...

I would approach this problem by just looping from 0 to 31 (0b11111) and turning the binary representation into an array of fixed length.

You didn't tag this with a language, so I'm not sure how to give you example code, but that approach should work.

1: 00001
2: 00010
3: 00011
...
30:11110
31:11111

Edit: Just saw you tagged this question with Python. Sample python code implementing the above algorithm:

listLength=5
for x in range(0,2**listlength):
    print(list(bin(x)[2:].zfill(listlength)))

prints out:

['0', '0', '0', '0', '0']
['0', '0', '0', '0', '1']
['0', '0', '0', '1', '0']
['0', '0', '0', '1', '1']
['0', '0', '1', '0', '0']
['0', '0', '1', '0', '1']
['0', '0', '1', '1', '0']
['0', '0', '1', '1', '1']
['0', '1', '0', '0', '0']
['0', '1', '0', '0', '1']
['0', '1', '0', '1', '0']
['0', '1', '0', '1', '1']
['0', '1', '1', '0', '0']
['0', '1', '1', '0', '1']
['0', '1', '1', '1', '0']
['0', '1', '1', '1', '1']
['1', '0', '0', '0', '0']
['1', '0', '0', '0', '1']
['1', '0', '0', '1', '0']
['1', '0', '0', '1', '1']
['1', '0', '1', '0', '0']
['1', '0', '1', '0', '1']
['1', '0', '1', '1', '0']
['1', '0', '1', '1', '1']
['1', '1', '0', '0', '0']
['1', '1', '0', '0', '1']
['1', '1', '0', '1', '0']
['1', '1', '0', '1', '1']
['1', '1', '1', '0', '0']
['1', '1', '1', '0', '1']
['1', '1', '1', '1', '0']

import numpy as np
def all_combinations(width, vals):
    return np.array(np.meshgrid(*[vals]*width,
                    indexing='ij')).reshape((width,-1)).transpose()

print(all_combinations(width=3, vals=[0,1]))
print(all_combinations(width=2, vals=['a','b','c']))

Output:

[[0 0 0]
 [0 0 1]
 [0 1 0]
 [0 1 1]
 [1 0 0]
 [1 0 1]
 [1 1 0]
 [1 1 1]]
[['a' 'a']
 ['a' 'b']
 ['a' 'c']
 ['b' 'a']
 ['b' 'b']
 ['b' 'c']
 ['c' 'a']
 ['c' 'b']
 ['c' 'c']]