How can I find all permutations of a string without using recursion?

Question

Can someone help me with this: This is a program to find all the permutations of a string of any length. Need a non-recursive form of the same. ( a C language implementation is preferred)

using namespace std;

string swtch(string topermute, int x, int y)
{
  string newstring = topermute;
  newstring[x] = newstring[y];
  newstring[y] = topermute[x]; //avoids temp variable
  return newstring;
}

void permute(string topermute, int place)
{
  if(place == topermute.length() - 1)
  {
    cout<<topermute<<endl;
  }
  for(int nextchar = place; nextchar < topermute.length(); nextchar++)
  {
    permute(swtch(topermute, place, nextchar),place+1);
  }
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{    
  if(argc!=2)    
  {
    cout<<"Proper input is 'permute string'";
    return 1;
  }
  permute(argv[1], 0);
  return 0;    
}

Answer 1

Another approach would be to allocate an array of n! char arrays and fill them in the same way that you would by hand.

If the string is "abcd", put all of the "a" chars in position 0 for the first n-1! arrays, in position 1 for the next n-1! arrays, etc. Then put all of the "b" chars in position 1 for the first n-2! arrays, etc, all of the "c" chars in position 2 for the first n-3! arrays, etc, and all of the "d" chars in position 3 for the first n-4! arrays, etc, using modulo n arithmetic in each case to move from position 3 to position 0 as you are filling out the arrays.

No swapping is necessary and you know early on if you have enough memory to store the results or not.

Answer 2

A stack based non-recursive equivalent of your code:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

struct State
{
    State (std::string topermute_, int place_, int nextchar_, State* next_ = 0)
        : topermute (topermute_)
        , place (place_)
        , nextchar (nextchar_)
        , next (next_)
    {
    }

    std::string topermute;
    int place;
    int nextchar;

    State* next;
};

std::string swtch (std::string topermute, int x, int y)
{
    std::string newstring = topermute;
    newstring[x] = newstring[y];
    newstring[y] = topermute[x]; //avoids temp variable

    return newstring;
}

void permute (std::string topermute, int place = 0)
{
    // Linked list stack.
    State* top = new State (topermute, place, place);

    while (top != 0)
    {
        State* pop = top;
        top = pop->next;

        if (pop->place == pop->topermute.length () - 1)
        {
            std::cout << pop->topermute << std::endl;
        }

        for (int i = pop->place; i < pop->topermute.length (); ++i)
        {
            top = new State (swtch (pop->topermute, pop->place, i), pop->place + 1, i, top);
        }

        delete pop;
    }
}

int main (int argc, char* argv[])
{
    if (argc!=2)    
    {
        std::cout<<"Proper input is 'permute string'";
        return 1;
    }
    else
    {
        permute (argv[1]);
    }

    return 0;
}

I've tried to make it C-like and avoided c++ STL containers and member functions (used a constructor for simplicity though).

Note, the permutations are generated in reverse order to the original.

I should add that using a stack in this way is just simulating recursion.