Generating all permutations of a given string

Question

What is an elegant way to find all the permutations of a string. E.g. permutation for ba, would be ba and ab, but what about longer st

Answer 1

Use recursion.

when the input is an empty string the only permutation is an empty string.Try for each of the letters in the string by making it as the first letter and then find all the permutations of the remaining letters using a recursive call.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

class Permutation {
    private static List permutation(String prefix, String str) {
        List permutations = new ArrayList<>();
        int n = str.length();
        if (n == 0) {
            permutations.add(prefix);
        } else {
            for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
                permutations.addAll(permutation(prefix + str.charAt(i), str.substring(i + 1, n) + str.substring(0, i)));
            }
        }
        return permutations;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List perms = permutation("", "abcd");

        String[] array = new String[perms.size()];
        for (int i = 0; i < perms.size(); i++) {
            array[i] = perms.get(i);
        }

        int x = array.length;

        for (final String anArray : array) {
            System.out.println(anArray);
        }
    }
}