How to generate all permutations of a list

Question

How do you generate all the permutations of a list in Python, independently of the type of elements in that list?

For example:

permutations([])
[]

permutations([1])
[1]

permutations([1, 2])
[1, 2]
[2, 1]

permutations([1, 2, 3])
[1, 2, 3]
[1, 3, 2]
[2, 1, 3]
[2, 3, 1]
[3, 1, 2]
[3, 2, 1]

Answer 1

Hello @kartik,

Try this:

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])

called as:

permutations('abc')