How do you make a list of all possible arrangements in python?

Question

I am currently working on a simple project on my own, and I stumbled on a problem:
I need to have a list of 4 numbers: say

L=[1,3,4,6]

I need a full list of rearrangements of the Numbers so:

L_arranged=[[1,3,4,6],[1,3,6,4],[1,6,3,4],...,[3,4,1,6]]

Any Ideas?
Even a theory would be useful, thank you :)

[`itertools.permutations()`](https://docs.python.org/2/library/itertools.html#itertools.permutations). — Eli Sadoff, Nov 11 '16 at 23:17

Valkyrie · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-12T00:07:15.563

>>> from itertools import permutations
>>> [list(p) for p in permutations([1,3,4,6])]
[[1, 3, 4, 6], [1, 3, 6, 4], [1, 6, 3, 4], ..., [3, 4, 1, 6]]

If you don't need to mutate (edit) the results, you can cast the return straight to a list, yielding tuples

>>> list(permutations([1,3,4,6]))
[(1, 3, 4, 6), (1, 3, 6, 4), (1, 6, 3, 4), ..., (3, 4, 1, 6)]

Even faster, if you plan on using the results solely as an iterator, you don't need to cast it at all

>>> for p in permutations([1,3,4,6]):
...     print(p)
(1, 3, 4, 6)
(1, 3, 6, 4)
(1, 6, 3, 4)
    ...
(3, 4, 1, 6)

1 Answers1