Why does itertools.permutations() return a list, instead of a string?

Asked 2011-11-13T18:27:33.870

Why does itertools.permutations() return a list of characters or digits for each permutation, instead of just returning a string?

For example:

>>> print([x for x in itertools.permutations('1234')])
>>> [('1', '2', '3', '4'), ('1', '2', '4', '3'), ('1', '3', '2', '4') ... ]

Why doesn't it return this?

>>> ['1234', '1243', '1324' ... ]

python python-3.x python-itertools

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1 Answer

Because it expects an iterable as a parameter and doesn't know, it's a string. The parameter is described in the docs.

answered 2011-11-13T18:30:29.043