Java Code for permutations of a list of numbers

Question

I have written a program to find all the possible permutations of a given list of items. This precisely means that my program prints all possible P(n,r) values for r=0 to n

Below is the code:

package com.algorithm;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Collection;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Set;

public class Permutations<T> {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        Permutations<Integer> obj = new Permutations<Integer>();
        Collection<Integer> input = new ArrayList<Integer>();
        input.add(1);
        input.add(2);
        input.add(3);

        Collection<List<Integer>> output = obj.permute(input);
        int k = 0;
        Set<List<Integer>> pnr = null;
        for (int i = 0; i <= input.size(); i++) {
            pnr = new HashSet<List<Integer>>();
            for(List<Integer> integers : output){
            pnr.add(integers.subList(i, integers.size()));
            }
            k = input.size()- i;
            System.out.println("P("+input.size()+","+k+") :"+ 
            "Count ("+pnr.size()+") :- "+pnr);
        }
    }
    public Collection<List<T>> permute(Collection<T> input) {
        Collection<List<T>> output = new ArrayList<List<T>>();
        if (input.isEmpty()) {
            output.add(new ArrayList<T>());
            return output;
        }
        List<T> list = new ArrayList<T>(input);
        T head = list.get(0);
        List<T> rest = list.subList(1, list.size());
        for (List<T> permutations : permute(rest)) {
            List<List<T>> subLists = new ArrayList<List<T>>();
            for (int i = 0; i <= permutations.size(); i++) {
                List<T> subList = new ArrayList<T>();
                subList.addAll(permutations);
                subList.add(i, head);
                subLists.add(subList);
            }
            output.addAll(subLists);
        }
        return output;
    }
}

Output

P(3,3) : Count (6) :- [[1, 2, 3], [2, 3, 1], [3, 2, 1], [3, 1, 2], [2, 1, 3], [1, 3, 2]]
P(3,2) : Count (6) :- [[3, 1], [2, 1], [3, 2], [1, 3], [2, 3], [1, 2]]
P(3,1) : Count (3) :- [[3], [1], [2]]
P(3,0) : Count (1) :- [[]]

My problem is, as I go increasing the numbers in the input list. Running time increases and after 11 numbers in the input list, the program almost dies. Takes around 2 GB memory to run.

I am running this on a machine having 8GB RAM and i5 processor, so the speed and space is not a problem.

I would appreciate, if anyone can help me writing a more efficient code.

Answer 1

If you're not storing it -- if you're just iterating through it -- then consider using Heap's algorithm (#3 on http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/AllPerm.shtml) -- or, just to make your life easier, use Guava's Collections2.permutations, which doesn't actually construct the whole list of permutations -- it walks through them on the fly. (Disclosure: I contribute to Guava.)

Answer 2

If you want all permutations of 15-ish or more elements, write them to disk or a db or something, since they won't fit in memory. Edit: Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter algorithm. This is probably what you're looking for.

Answer 3

Java library of Google (Guava) has a utility method for this: Collections2#permutations(Collection)