该算法是最有效的算法，它避免了递归调用中的数组传递和操作，适用于Python 2、3：

def permute(items):
    length = len(items)
    def inner(ix=[]):
        do_yield = len(ix) == length - 1
        for i in range(0, length):
            if i in ix: #avoid duplicates
                continue
            if do_yield:
                yield tuple([items[y] for y in ix + [i]])
            else:
                for p in inner(ix + [i]):
                    yield p
    return inner()

用法：

for p in permute((1,2,3)):
    print(p)

(1, 2, 3)
(1, 3, 2)
(2, 1, 3)
(2, 3, 1)
(3, 1, 2)
(3, 2, 1)

如果用户希望在列表中保留所有排列，可以使用以下代码：

def get_permutations(nums, p_list=[], temp_items=[]):
    if not nums:
        return
    elif len(nums) == 1:
        new_items = temp_items+[nums[0]]
        p_list.append(new_items)
        return
    else:
        for i in range(len(nums)):
            temp_nums = nums[:i]+nums[i+1:]
            new_temp_items = temp_items + [nums[i]]
            get_permutations(temp_nums, p_list, new_temp_items)

nums = [1,2,3]
p_list = []

get_permutations(nums, p_list)

def permutations(head, tail=''):
    if len(head) == 0:
        print(tail)
    else:
        for i in range(len(head)):
            permutations(head[:i] + head[i+1:], tail + head[i])

称为：

permutations('abc')

list2Perm = [1, 2.0, 'three']
listPerm = [[a, b, c]
            for a in list2Perm
            for b in list2Perm
            for c in list2Perm
            if ( a != b and b != c and a != c )
            ]
print listPerm

输出：

[
    [1, 2.0, 'three'], 
    [1, 'three', 2.0], 
    [2.0, 1, 'three'], 
    [2.0, 'three', 1], 
    ['three', 1, 2.0], 
    ['three', 2.0, 1]
]

对于性能，一个由Knuth启发的numpy解决方案（第22页）：

from numpy import empty, uint8
from math import factorial

def perms(n):
    f = 1
    p = empty((2*n-1, factorial(n)), uint8)
    for i in range(n):
        p[i, :f] = i
        p[i+1:2*i+1, :f] = p[:i, :f]  # constitution de blocs
        for j in range(i):
            p[:i+1, f*(j+1):f*(j+2)] = p[j+1:j+i+2, :f]  # copie de blocs
        f = f*(i+1)
    return p[:n, :]

复制大量内存可节省时间-它比列表（itertools.permutations（range（n））快20倍：

In [1]: %timeit -n10 list(permutations(range(10)))
10 loops, best of 3: 815 ms per loop

In [2]: %timeit -n100 perms(10) 
100 loops, best of 3: 40 ms per loop

def permutate(l):
    for i, x in enumerate(l):
        for y in l[i + 1:]:
            yield x, y


if __name__ == '__main__':
    print(list(permutate(list('abcd'))))
    print(list(permutate([1, 2, 3, 4])))

#[('a', 'b'), ('a', 'c'), ('a', 'd'), ('b', 'c'), ('b', 'd'), ('c', 'd')]
#[(1, 2), (1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 3), (2, 4), (3, 4)]