Given a permutation's lexicographic number, is it possible to get any item in it in O(1)

Question

I want to know whether the task explained below is even theoretically possible, and if so how I could do it.

You are given a space of N elements (i.e. all

Answer 1

Edit:

I misunderstood the question, but it was not in waste. My algorithms let me understand: the factoradic representation of a permutation's lexicographic number is almost the same as the permutation itself. In fact the first digit of the factoradic representation is the same as the first element of the corresponding permutation (assuming your space consists of numbers from 0 to N-1). Knowing this there is not really a point in storing the index rather than the permutation itself . To see how to convert the lexicographic number into a permutation, read below. See also this wikipedia link about Lehmer code.

Original post:

In the S space there are N elements that can fill the first slot, meaning that there are (N-1)! elements that start with 0. So i/(N-1)! is the first element (lets call it 'a'). The subset of S that starts with 0 consists of (N-1)! elements. These are the possible permutations of the set N{a}. Now you can get the second element: its the i(%((N-1)!)/(N-2)!). Repeat the process and you got the permutation.

Reverse is just as simple. Start with i=0. Get the 2nd last element of the permutation. Make a set of the last two elements, and find the element's position in it (its either the 0th element or the 1st), lets call this position j. Then i+=j*2!. Repeat the process (you can start with the last element too, but it will always be the 0th element of the possibilities).

Java-ish pesudo code:

find_by_index(List N, int i){
    String str = "";
    for(int l = N.length-1; i >= 0; i--){
        int pos = i/fact(l);
        str += N.get(pos);
        N.remove(pos);
        i %= fact(l);
    }
    return str;
}

find_index(String str){
    OrderedList N;
    int i = 0;
    for(int l = str.length-1; l >= 0; l--){
        String item = str.charAt(l);
        int pos = N.add(item);
        i += pos*fact(str.length-l)
    }
    return i;
}

find_by_index should run in O(n) assuming that N is pre ordered, while find_index is O(n*log(n)) (where n is the size of the N space)