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
We can use factorial to find how many strings started with particular letter.
Example: take the input abcd
. (3!) == 6
strings will start with every letter of abcd
.
static public int facts(int x){
int sum = 1;
for (int i = 1; i < x; i++) {
sum *= (i+1);
}
return sum;
}
public static void permutation(String str) {
char[] str2 = str.toCharArray();
int n = str2.length;
int permutation = 0;
if (n == 1) {
System.out.println(str2[0]);
} else if (n == 2) {
System.out.println(str2[0] + "" + str2[1]);
System.out.println(str2[1] + "" + str2[0]);
} else {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
if (true) {
char[] str3 = str.toCharArray();
char temp = str3[i];
str3[i] = str3[0];
str3[0] = temp;
str2 = str3;
}
for (int j = 1, count = 0; count < facts(n-1); j++, count++) {
if (j != n-1) {
char temp1 = str2[j+1];
str2[j+1] = str2[j];
str2[j] = temp1;
} else {
char temp1 = str2[n-1];
str2[n-1] = str2[1];
str2[1] = temp1;
j = 1;
} // end of else block
permutation++;
System.out.print("permutation " + permutation + " is -> ");
for (int k = 0; k < n; k++) {
System.out.print(str2[k]);
} // end of loop k
System.out.println();
} // end of loop j
} // end of loop i
}
}