人们确实可以对每个排列的第一个元素进行迭代，正如tzwen的答案。然而，这样编写此解决方案更有效：

def all_perms(elements):
    if len(elements) <= 1:
        yield elements  # Only permutation possible = no permutation
    else:
        # Iteration over the first element in the result permutation:
        for (index, first_elmt) in enumerate(elements):
            other_elmts = elements[:index]+elements[index+1:]
            for permutation in all_perms(other_elmts): 
                yield [first_elmt] + permutation

这个解决方案大约快了30%，显然是因为递归以len（元素）<=1而不是0结尾。它的内存效率也高得多，因为它使用了一个生成器函数（通过yield），就像Riccardo Reyes的解决方案一样。

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

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

我的Python解决方案：

def permutes(input,offset):
    if( len(input) == offset ):
        return [''.join(input)]

    result=[]        
    for i in range( offset, len(input) ):
         input[offset], input[i] = input[i], input[offset]
         result = result + permutes(input,offset+1)
         input[offset], input[i] = input[i], input[offset]
    return result

# input is a "string"
# return value is a list of strings
def permutations(input):
    return permutes( list(input), 0 )

# Main Program
print( permutations("wxyz") )

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)

使用计数器

from collections import Counter

def permutations(nums):
    ans = [[]]
    cache = Counter(nums)

    for idx, x in enumerate(nums):
        result = []
        for items in ans:
            cache1 = Counter(items)
            for id, n in enumerate(nums):
                if cache[n] != cache1[n] and items + [n] not in result:
                    result.append(items + [n])

        ans = result
    return ans
permutations([1, 2, 2])
> [[1, 2, 2], [2, 1, 2], [2, 2, 1]]