How do I generate all permutations of a list?

Use itertools.permutations from the standard library:

import itertools
list(itertools.permutations([1, 2, 3]))

Adapted from here is a demonstration of how itertools.permutations might be implemented:

def permutations(elements):
    if len(elements) <= 1:
        yield elements
        return
    for perm in permutations(elements[1:]):
        for i in range(len(elements)):
            # nb elements[0:1] works in both string and list contexts
            yield perm[:i] + elements[0:1] + perm[i:]

A couple of alternative approaches are listed in the documentation of itertools.permutations. Here's one:

def permutations(iterable, r=None):
    # permutations('ABCD', 2) --> AB AC AD BA BC BD CA CB CD DA DB DC
    # permutations(range(3)) --> 012 021 102 120 201 210
    pool = tuple(iterable)
    n = len(pool)
    r = n if r is None else r
    if r > n:
        return
    indices = range(n)
    cycles = range(n, n-r, -1)
    yield tuple(pool[i] for i in indices[:r])
    while n:
        for i in reversed(range(r)):
            cycles[i] -= 1
            if cycles[i] == 0:
                indices[i:] = indices[i+1:] + indices[i:i+1]
                cycles[i] = n - i
            else:
                j = cycles[i]
                indices[i], indices[-j] = indices[-j], indices[i]
                yield tuple(pool[i] for i in indices[:r])
                break
        else:
            return

And another, based on itertools.product:

def permutations(iterable, r=None):
    pool = tuple(iterable)
    n = len(pool)
    r = n if r is None else r
    for indices in product(range(n), repeat=r):
        if len(set(indices)) == r:
            yield tuple(pool[i] for i in indices)

For Python 2.6 onwards:

import itertools
itertools.permutations([1, 2, 3])

This returns as a generator. Use list(permutations(xs)) to return as a list.

First, import itertools:

import itertools

Permutation (order matters):

print(list(itertools.permutations([1,2,3,4], 2)))

[(1, 2), (1, 3), (1, 4),
(2, 1), (2, 3), (2, 4),
(3, 1), (3, 2), (3, 4),
(4, 1), (4, 2), (4, 3)]

Combination (order does NOT matter):

print(list(itertools.combinations('123', 2)))

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

Cartesian product (with several iterables):

print(list(itertools.product([1,2,3], [4,5,6])))

[(1, 4), (1, 5), (1, 6),
(2, 4), (2, 5), (2, 6),
(3, 4), (3, 5), (3, 6)]

Cartesian product (with one iterable and itself):

print(list(itertools.product([1,2], repeat=3)))

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

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')