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)

在我看来，一个很明显的方式可能是：

def permutList(l):
    if not l:
            return [[]]
    res = []
    for e in l:
            temp = l[:]
            temp.remove(e)
            res.extend([[e] + r for r in permutList(temp)])

    return res

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')

def pzip(c, seq):
    result = []
    for item in seq:
        for i in range(len(item)+1):
            result.append(item[i:]+c+item[:i])
    return result


def perm(line):
    seq = [c for c in line]
    if len(seq) <=1 :
        return seq
    else:
        return pzip(seq[0], perm(seq[1:]))

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]
]

如果有人喜欢这个丑陋的单行线（虽然只适用于字符串）：

def p(a):
    return a if len(a) == 1 else [[a[i], *j] for i in range(len(a)) for j in p(a[:i] + a[i + 1:])]