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

This one is without recursion

public static void permute(String s) {
    if(null==s || s.isEmpty()) {
        return;
    }

    // List containing words formed in each iteration 
    List<String> strings = new LinkedList<String>();
    strings.add(String.valueOf(s.charAt(0))); // add the first element to the list

     // Temp list that holds the set of strings for 
     //  appending the current character to all position in each word in the original list
    List<String> tempList = new LinkedList<String>(); 

    for(int i=1; i< s.length(); i++) {

        for(int j=0; j<strings.size(); j++) {
            tempList.addAll(merge(s.charAt(i), strings.get(j)));
                        }
        strings.removeAll(strings);
        strings.addAll(tempList);

        tempList.removeAll(tempList);

    }

    for(int i=0; i<strings.size(); i++) {
        System.out.println(strings.get(i));
    }
}

/**
 * helper method that appends the given character at each position in the given string 
 * and returns a set of such modified strings 
 * - set removes duplicates if any(in case a character is repeated)
 */
private static Set<String> merge(Character c,  String s) {
    if(s==null || s.isEmpty()) {
        return null;
    }

    int len = s.length();
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    Set<String> list = new HashSet<String>();

    for(int i=0; i<= len; i++) {
        sb = new StringBuilder();
        sb.append(s.substring(0, i) + c + s.substring(i, len));
        list.add(sb.toString());
    }

    return list;
}

Answer 2

public static void permutation(String str) { 
    permutation("", str); 
}

private static void permutation(String prefix, String str) {
    int n = str.length();
    if (n == 0) System.out.println(prefix);
    else {
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
            permutation(prefix + str.charAt(i), str.substring(0, i) + str.substring(i+1, n));
    }
}

(via Introduction to Programming in Java)

Answer 3

Recursion is not necessary, even you can calculate any permutation directly, this solution uses generics to permute any array.

Here is a good information about this algorihtm.

For C# developers here is more useful implementation.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String word = "12345";

    Character[] array = ArrayUtils.toObject(word.toCharArray());
    long[] factorials = Permutation.getFactorials(array.length + 1);

    for (long i = 0; i < factorials[array.length]; i++) {
        Character[] permutation = Permutation.<Character>getPermutation(i, array, factorials);
        printPermutation(permutation);
    }
}

private static void printPermutation(Character[] permutation) {
    for (int i = 0; i < permutation.length; i++) {
        System.out.print(permutation[i]);
    }
    System.out.println();
}

This algorithm has O(N) time and space complexity to calculate each permutation.

public class Permutation {
    public static <T> T[] getPermutation(long permutationNumber, T[] array, long[] factorials) {
        int[] sequence = generateSequence(permutationNumber, array.length - 1, factorials);
        T[] permutation = generatePermutation(array, sequence);

        return permutation;
    }

    public static <T> T[] generatePermutation(T[] array, int[] sequence) {
        T[] clone = array.clone();

        for (int i = 0; i < clone.length - 1; i++) {
            swap(clone, i, i + sequence[i]);
        }

        return clone;
    }

    private static int[] generateSequence(long permutationNumber, int size, long[] factorials) {
        int[] sequence = new int[size];

        for (int j = 0; j < sequence.length; j++) {
            long factorial = factorials[sequence.length - j];
            sequence[j] = (int) (permutationNumber / factorial);
            permutationNumber = (int) (permutationNumber % factorial);
        }

        return sequence;
    }

    private static <T> void swap(T[] array, int i, int j) {
        T t = array[i];
        array[i] = array[j];
        array[j] = t;
    }

    public static long[] getFactorials(int length) {
        long[] factorials = new long[length];
        long factor = 1;

        for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
            factor *= i <= 1 ? 1 : i;
            factorials[i] = factor;
        }

        return factorials;
    }
}

Answer 4

Here is my solution that is based on the idea of the book "Cracking the Coding Interview" (P54):

/**
 * List permutations of a string.
 * 
 * @param s the input string
 * @return  the list of permutations
 */
public static ArrayList<String> permutation(String s) {
    // The result
    ArrayList<String> res = new ArrayList<String>();
    // If input string's length is 1, return {s}
    if (s.length() == 1) {
        res.add(s);
    } else if (s.length() > 1) {
        int lastIndex = s.length() - 1;
        // Find out the last character
        String last = s.substring(lastIndex);
        // Rest of the string
        String rest = s.substring(0, lastIndex);
        // Perform permutation on the rest string and
        // merge with the last character
        res = merge(permutation(rest), last);
    }
    return res;
}

/**
 * @param list a result of permutation, e.g. {"ab", "ba"}
 * @param c    the last character
 * @return     a merged new list, e.g. {"cab", "acb" ... }
 */
public static ArrayList<String> merge(ArrayList<String> list, String c) {
    ArrayList<String> res = new ArrayList<>();
    // Loop through all the string in the list
    for (String s : list) {
        // For each string, insert the last character to all possible positions
        // and add them to the new list
        for (int i = 0; i <= s.length(); ++i) {
            String ps = new StringBuffer(s).insert(i, c).toString();
            res.add(ps);
        }
    }
    return res;
}

---

Running output of string "abcd":

• Step 1: Merge [a] and b: [ba, ab]

• Step 2: Merge [ba, ab] and c: [cba, bca, bac, cab, acb, abc]

• Step 3: Merge [cba, bca, bac, cab, acb, abc] and d: [dcba, cdba, cbda, cbad, dbca, bdca, bcda, bcad, dbac, bdac, badc, bacd, dcab, cdab, cadb, cabd, dacb, adcb, acdb, acbd, dabc, adbc, abdc, abcd]

Answer 5

Here is another simpler method of doing Permutation of a string.

public class Solution4 {
public static void main(String[] args) {
    String  a = "Protijayi";
  per(a, 0);

}

static void per(String a  , int start ) {
      //bse case;
    if(a.length() == start) {System.out.println(a);}
    char[] ca = a.toCharArray();
    //swap 
    for (int i = start; i < ca.length; i++) {
        char t = ca[i];
        ca[i] = ca[start];
        ca[start] = t;
        per(new String(ca),start+1);
    }

}//per

}

Answer 6

A java implementation to print all the permutations of a given string considering duplicate characters and prints only unique characters is as follow:

import java.util.Set;
import java.util.HashSet;

public class PrintAllPermutations2
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        String str = "AAC";

    PrintAllPermutations2 permutation = new PrintAllPermutations2();

    Set<String> uniqueStrings = new HashSet<>();

    permutation.permute("", str, uniqueStrings);
}

void permute(String prefixString, String s, Set<String> set)
{
    int n = s.length();

    if(n == 0)
    {
        if(!set.contains(prefixString))
        {
            System.out.println(prefixString);
            set.add(prefixString);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        for(int i=0; i<n; i++)
        {
            permute(prefixString + s.charAt(i), s.substring(0,i) + s.substring(i+1,n), set);
        }
    }
}
}