Permutation generator

Combinatorics & Algorithms Design assignment. The purpose of this assignment is to implement algorithms that generate all permutations given a set.

Instructions

Dependency

• CMake 3.8 and newer
• Boost 1.64 and newer (only program_options)

Compilation

$ git clone https://github.com/HippoBaro/permutation_generator.git
$ cd permutation_generator && mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ ./permutation_generator --help

Program options

Option	Description	Default
algorithm,a	set algorithm [log, sjt]	log
elements,e	set number of elements	None
print,p	print output	OFF

Compiler support

The code uses some C++17 features. It has been compiled successfully on:

• GCC 7.1 and newer
• Clang 3.9.0 and newer

Implementation

Algorithms

• Lexicographic Order Generation — log
• Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter — sjt

Performances

The code is tuned for performance with the exclusive use of fixed-sized vectors. The algorithms are implemented in STL style, allowing the compiler to specialize all operations for every data type.

Number of elements	LOG	SJT	STL
11!	0m0.172s	0m2.340s	0m0.161s
12!	0m1.856s	0m31.980s	0m1.760s
13!	0m23.941s	---------	0m21.679s

./permutation_generator -a log -e 5 -p

Will list and print all 5! permutation of the set ${ 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 }$ using the Lexicographic Order Generation algorithm.

Bonus

STL API

The implementation is heavily specialized and works for all container implementing RandomAccessIterators, i.e std::array, std::string, std::vector, etc. The permutations can be generated based on any data type implementing operator<. The example's main() function uses std::vector<size_t> as a demonstration, but could use std::string with no further changes. This is written in a C++ zero-overhead fashion where be able to use sophisticated iterator doesn't hurt performance if one prefers plain old pointers.

Stateful and stateless API equivalent

The API allows other algorithms to be added very easily in their own files, regardless of whether their are stateful (as Steinhaus–Johnson–Trotter) or stateless (as Lexicographic Order Generation). Independently, the API remains the same, and memory allocation is performed iff necessary.