Permutations in JavaScript?

Question

I\'m trying to write a function that does the following:

• takes an array of integers as an argument (e.g. [1,2,3,4])
• creates an array of all the possib

Answer 1

Most of the other answers do not utilize the new javascript generator functions which is a perfect solution to this type of problem. You probably only need one permutation at time in memory. Also, I prefer to generate a permutation of a range of indices as this allows me to index each permutation and jump straight to any particular permutation as well as be used to permutate any other collection.

// ES6 generator version of python itertools [permutations and combinations]
const range = function*(l) { for (let i = 0; i < l; i+=1) yield i; }
const isEmpty = arr => arr.length === 0;

const permutations = function*(a) {
    const r = arguments[1] || [];
    if (isEmpty(a)) yield r;
    for (let i of range(a.length)) {
        const aa = [...a];
        const rr = [...r, ...aa.splice(i, 1)];
        yield* permutations(aa, rr);
    }
}
console.log('permutations of ABC');
console.log(JSON.stringify([...permutations([...'ABC'])]));

const combinations = function*(a, count) {
    const r = arguments[2] || [];
    if (count) {
        count = count - 1;
        for (let i of range(a.length - count)) {
            const aa = a.slice(i);
            const rr = [...r, ...aa.splice(0, 1)];
            yield* combinations(aa, count, rr);
        }
    } else {
        yield r;
    }
}
console.log('combinations of 2 of ABC');
console.log(JSON.stringify([...combinations([...'ABC'], 2)]));



const permutator = function() {
    const range = function*(args) {
        let {begin = 0, count} = args;
        for (let i = begin; count; count--, i+=1) {
            yield i;
        }
    }
    const factorial = fact => fact ? fact * factorial(fact - 1) : 1;

    return {
        perm: function(n, permutationId) {
            const indexCount = factorial(n);
            permutationId = ((permutationId%indexCount)+indexCount)%indexCount;

            let permutation = [0];
            for (const choiceCount of range({begin: 2, count: n-1})) {
                const choice = permutationId % choiceCount;
                const lastIndex = permutation.length;

                permutation.push(choice);
                permutation = permutation.map((cv, i, orig) => 
                    (cv < choice || i == lastIndex) ? cv : cv + 1
                );

                permutationId = Math.floor(permutationId / choiceCount);
            }
            return permutation.reverse();
        },
        perms: function*(n) {
            for (let i of range({count: factorial(n)})) {
                yield this.perm(n, i);
            }
        }
    };
}();

console.log('indexing type permutator');
let i = 0;
for (let elem of permutator.perms(3)) {
  console.log(`${i}: ${elem}`);
  i+=1;
}
console.log();
console.log(`3: ${permutator.perm(3,3)}`);