Somewhere a while back I was reading about working with trying to find all possible combinations of a given word, called Permutations. Since my main goal was to take a given word (or string) and cycle through all of the possible combinations, I figure this would make for a fun attempt at a PowerShell function.
I really don’t need to calculate the number of permutations, but just for the heck of it, I through something quick together to get the possible combinations. But first I had to figure out what the formula was to make this happen. In this case, I was aiming for a Permutation with no repetition. This means that each item in the string can only be used once, so if I chose “cat”, it can only have the “c”,”a” and “t” instead of possibly having all “c’s”, “a’s” and “t’s”. Knowing this, the formula that I needed consisted of this:
3!
I use a factorial with the number of characters in the string to determine how many permutations there are. An easier way to look at it is like this:
3*2*1
This gives me the answer of 6. So I know that there are 6 possible permutations to “cat”. My PowerShell approach is pretty primitive, but works just fine for me.
$string = "cat" Invoke-Expression ($String.length..1 -join "*")
Like I said, nothing earth shattering here. The next step was to make my function to the permutation possible. I had seen others do this using a variety of languages from C#, java, etc… and figure if they can do this, the so can I in PowerShell.
In the end, I came up with a function on Get-StringPermutation that can take a string and show all possible permutations to it.
Get-StringPermutation -String "cat"
Larger strings can be piped into Format-Wide and specifying a column size to display everything.
Get-StringPermutation -String "super" | Format-Wide -Column 4
Of course, if you wanted to know how many permutations there were, you can do this:
$permutations = Get-StringPermutation -String "super" $permutations.count
Of course, you could always pipe the output into Measure-Object as well to get the answer, which in the case of “super”, is 120.
The basics of the function include using a StringBuilder to add the String which allows for easier access to move each letter of the string around. That means that I can re-order all of the letters in the string to get all possible combinations.
There is definitely a ton of room for improvement on this code. Possible inclusions are allowing a collection of items to find all permutations or allowing for repetition as well.
The function can be downloaded from the Script Repository and I also have the source code available below to view as well. Check them both out and let me know what you think!
Download
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Get-StringPermutation-107c7a75
Source Code
Function Get-StringPermutation {
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Retrieves the permutations of a given string. Works only with a single word.
.DESCRIPTION
Retrieves the permutations of a given string Works only with a single word.
.PARAMETER String
Single string used to give permutations on
.NOTES
Name: Get-StringPermutation
Author: Boe Prox
DateCreated:21 Feb 2013
DateModifed:21 Feb 2013
.EXAMPLE
Get-StringPermutation -String "hat"
Permutation
-----------
hat
hta
ath
aht
tha
tah
Description
-----------
Shows all possible permutations for the string 'hat'.
.EXAMPLE
Get-StringPermutation -String "help" | Format-Wide -Column 4
help hepl hlpe hlep
hpel hple elph elhp
ephl eplh ehlp ehpl
lphe lpeh lhep lhpe
leph lehp phel phle
pelh pehl plhe pleh
Description
-----------
Shows all possible permutations for the string 'hat'.
#>
[cmdletbinding()]
Param(
[parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$True)]
[string]$String = 'the'
)
Begin {
#region Internal Functions
Function New-Anagram {
Param([int]$NewSize)
If ($NewSize -eq 1) {
return
}
For ($i=0;$i -lt $NewSize; $i++) {
New-Anagram -NewSize ($NewSize - 1)
If ($NewSize -eq 2) {
New-Object PSObject -Property @{
Permutation = $stringBuilder.ToString()
}
}
Move-Left -NewSize $NewSize
}
}
Function Move-Left {
Param([int]$NewSize)
$z = 0
$position = ($Size - $NewSize)
[char]$temp = $stringBuilder[$position]
For ($z=($position+1);$z -lt $Size; $z++) {
$stringBuilder[($z-1)] = $stringBuilder[$z]
}
$stringBuilder[($z-1)] = $temp
}
#endregion Internal Functions
}
Process {
$size = $String.length
$stringBuilder = New-Object System.Text.StringBuilder -ArgumentList $String
New-Anagram -NewSize $Size
}
End {}
}
Learn Powershell | Achieve More 
I created a function to use your function with an Array of words..
This is my first public post of code that i’ve made.. so please be gentle on me!
The limit of 75 items in the array is due to me using ASCII characters to represent each item in the array, and use your Get-StringPermutation to give me the list of the possible permutations, and return the permutations in array form.
Let me know what you think!
Function Get-ArrayPermutation
{
<#
.SYNOPSIS
Retrieves the permutations of a given array. Works only with arrays with max 75 items.
}
$Array = “cat”, “dog”, “fish”, “monkey”, “snake”, “horse”
Get-ArrayPermutation $Array