Generate list of all possible permutations of a string

Question

How would I go about generating a list of all possible permutations of a string between x and y characters in length, containing a variable list of characters.

Any l

Answer 1

Here is a link that describes how to print permutations of a string. http://nipun-linuxtips.blogspot.in/2012/11/print-all-permutations-of-characters-in.html

Answer 2

I just whipped this up quick in Ruby:

def perms(x, y, possible_characters)
  all = [""]
  current_array = all.clone
  1.upto(y) { |iteration|
    next_array = []
    current_array.each { |string|
      possible_characters.each { |c|
        value = string + c
        next_array.insert next_array.length, value
        all.insert all.length, value
      }
    }
    current_array = next_array
  }
  all.delete_if { |string| string.length < x }
end

You might look into language API for built in permutation type functions, and you might be able to write more optimized code, but if the numbers are all that high, I'm not sure there is much of a way around having a lot of results.

Anyways, the idea behind the code is start with string of length 0, then keep track of all the strings of length Z where Z is the current size in the iteration. Then, go through each string and append each character onto each string. Finally at the end, remove any that were below the x threshold and return the result.

I didn't test it with potentially meaningless input (null character list, weird values of x and y, etc).

Answer 3

Some working Java code based on Sarp's answer:

public class permute {

    static void permute(int level, String permuted,
                    boolean used[], String original) {
        int length = original.length();
        if (level == length) {
            System.out.println(permuted);
        } else {
            for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
                if (!used[i]) {
                    used[i] = true;
                    permute(level + 1, permuted + original.charAt(i),
                       used, original);
                    used[i] = false;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String s = "hello";
        boolean used[] = {false, false, false, false, false};
        permute(0, "", used, s);
    }
}

Answer 4

def gen( x,y,list): #to generate all strings inserting y at different positions
list = []
list.append( y+x )
for i in range( len(x) ):
    list.append( func(x,0,i) + y + func(x,i+1,len(x)-1) )
return list 

def func( x,i,j ): #returns x[i..j]
z = '' 
for i in range(i,j+1):
    z = z+x[i]
return z 

def perm( x , length , list ): #perm function
if length == 1 : # base case
    list.append( x[len(x)-1] )
    return list 
else:
    lists = perm( x , length-1 ,list )
    lists_temp = lists #temporarily storing the list 
    lists = []
    for i in range( len(lists_temp) ) :
        list_temp = gen(lists_temp[i],x[length-2],lists)
        lists += list_temp 
    return lists

Answer 5

... and here is the C version:

void permute(const char *s, char *out, int *used, int len, int lev)
{
    if (len == lev) {
        out[lev] = '\0';
        puts(out);
        return;
    }

    int i;
    for (i = 0; i < len; ++i) {
        if (! used[i])
            continue;

        used[i] = 1;
        out[lev] = s[i];
        permute(s, out, used, len, lev + 1);
        used[i] = 0;
    }
    return;
}

Answer 6

In Perl, if you want to restrict yourself to the lowercase alphabet, you can do this:

my @result = ("a" .. "zzzz");

This gives all possible strings between 1 and 4 characters using lowercase characters. For uppercase, change "a" to "A" and "zzzz" to "ZZZZ".

For mixed-case it gets much harder, and probably not doable with one of Perl's builtin operators like that.