A question about a replacement of element of set

Question

To begin with, I'm a poor English speaker, which means it would be hard to read to natives... I was trying to memorize mRNA codons with mathematica.

mRNA={"U","C","A","G"}
Flatten[Table[f[{X,Y,Z}],{X,mRNA},{Y,mRNA},{Z,mRNA}],2]

A code above is what I wrote and what I want to do is to assign a number. Ex) f[{"U","U","U"}]=1, f[{"U","U","C"}]=2 ,etc/

So I tried a code below

Flatten[Table[f[{X,Y,Z}],{X,mRNA},{Y,mRNA},{Z,mRNA}],2]=Range[64]

But it causes a Set::Write error. How can I fix this?

Answer 1

Something like

MapIndexed[(f[#1]=#2[[1]])&, Tuples[mRNA, 3]]

On the other hand, an Association may be better to use:

A = AssociationThread[Tuples[mRNA, 3] -> Range[64]]

which you can then use with

A[{"U","U","C"}]

2

Answer 2

Wrap Evaluate around the LHS of the assignment:

Evaluate[Flatten[Table[f[{X, Y, Z}], {X, mRNA}, {Y, mRNA}, {Z, mRNA}], 2]] = Range[64];