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。

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 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]
]

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:]))

另一种解决方案：

def permutation(flag, k =1 ):
    N = len(flag)
    for i in xrange(0, N):
        if flag[i] != 0:
            continue
        flag[i] = k 
        if k == N:
            print flag
        permutation(flag, k+1)
        flag[i] = 0

permutation([0, 0, 0])