以下代码是给定列表的就地排列，作为生成器实现。由于它只返回对列表的引用，因此不应在生成器外部修改列表。该解决方案是非递归的，因此使用了低内存。还可以很好地处理输入列表中元素的多个副本。

def permute_in_place(a):
    a.sort()
    yield list(a)

    if len(a) <= 1:
        return

    first = 0
    last = len(a)
    while 1:
        i = last - 1

        while 1:
            i = i - 1
            if a[i] < a[i+1]:
                j = last - 1
                while not (a[i] < a[j]):
                    j = j - 1
                a[i], a[j] = a[j], a[i] # swap the values
                r = a[i+1:last]
                r.reverse()
                a[i+1:last] = r
                yield list(a)
                break
            if i == first:
                a.reverse()
                return

if __name__ == '__main__':
    for n in range(5):
        for a in permute_in_place(range(1, n+1)):
            print a
        print

    for a in permute_in_place([0, 0, 1, 1, 1]):
        print a
    print

递归之美：

>>> import copy
>>> def perm(prefix,rest):
...      for e in rest:
...              new_rest=copy.copy(rest)
...              new_prefix=copy.copy(prefix)
...              new_prefix.append(e)
...              new_rest.remove(e)
...              if len(new_rest) == 0:
...                      print new_prefix + new_rest
...                      continue
...              perm(new_prefix,new_rest)
... 
>>> perm([],['a','b','c','d'])
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
['a', 'b', 'd', 'c']
['a', 'c', 'b', 'd']
['a', 'c', 'd', 'b']
['a', 'd', 'b', 'c']
['a', 'd', 'c', 'b']
['b', 'a', 'c', 'd']
['b', 'a', 'd', 'c']
['b', 'c', 'a', 'd']
['b', 'c', 'd', 'a']
['b', 'd', 'a', 'c']
['b', 'd', 'c', 'a']
['c', 'a', 'b', 'd']
['c', 'a', 'd', 'b']
['c', 'b', 'a', 'd']
['c', 'b', 'd', 'a']
['c', 'd', 'a', 'b']
['c', 'd', 'b', 'a']
['d', 'a', 'b', 'c']
['d', 'a', 'c', 'b']
['d', 'b', 'a', 'c']
['d', 'b', 'c', 'a']
['d', 'c', 'a', 'b']
['d', 'c', 'b', 'a']

功能性风格

def addperm(x,l):
    return [ l[0:i] + [x] + l[i:]  for i in range(len(l)+1) ]

def perm(l):
    if len(l) == 0:
        return [[]]
    return [x for y in perm(l[1:]) for x in addperm(l[0],y) ]

print perm([ i for i in range(3)])

结果：

[[0, 1, 2], [1, 0, 2], [1, 2, 0], [0, 2, 1], [2, 0, 1], [2, 1, 0]]

这是受Haskell实现使用列表理解的启发：

def permutation(list):
    if len(list) == 0:
        return [[]]
    else:
        return [[x] + ys for x in list for ys in permutation(delete(list, x))]

def delete(list, item):
    lc = list[:]
    lc.remove(item)
    return lc

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)

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:]))