How to generate all permutations of a string in PHP?

Question

I need an algorithm that return all possible combination of all characters in one string.

I've tried:

$langd = strlen($input);
 for($i = 0;$i < $langd; $i++){
     $tempStrang = NULL;
     $tempStrang .= substr($input, $i, 1);
  for($j = $i+1, $k=0; $k < $langd; $k++, $j++){
   if($j > $langd) $j = 0;
   $tempStrang .= substr($input, $j, 1);
 }
 $myarray[] = $tempStrang;
}

But that only returns the same amount combination as the length of the string.

Say the $input = "hey", the result would be: hey, hye, eyh, ehy, yhe, yeh.

Answer 1

You can use a back tracking based approach to systematically generate all the permutations:

// function to generate and print all N! permutations of $str. (N = strlen($str)).
function permute($str,$i,$n) {
   if ($i == $n)
       print "$str\n";
   else {
        for ($j = $i; $j < $n; $j++) {
          swap($str,$i,$j);
          permute($str, $i+1, $n);
          swap($str,$i,$j); // backtrack.
       }
   }
}

// function to swap the char at pos $i and $j of $str.
function swap(&$str,$i,$j) {
    $temp = $str[$i];
    $str[$i] = $str[$j];
    $str[$j] = $temp;
}   

$str = "hey";
permute($str,0,strlen($str)); // call the function.

Output:

#php a.php
hey
hye
ehy
eyh
yeh
yhe