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I have been given a task of finding the permutations of the letters of a given word. For example, if the given word is like then possible answers are liek, lkie, and so on. This can be implemented in any language, but the rule is not to use any built-in functions/API to find the combinations.

We know that design patterns are for solving any problem with a given solution. For example, Information Expert is a design pattern. Is there any design pattern for finding combinations? Or will design patterns not suit for this situation? Will I have to learn a good algorithm for finding the solution? In that case, what’s the difference between an algorithm and a design pattern? Both try to solve the problem in a good, efficient way, right?

Please correct me if I’m wrong!

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  • Are you just making random changes to the string? Finding all the possible combinations of the letters? The problem is not very well specified, IMO...
    – Dean Harding
    Commented Mar 20, 2011 at 11:11
  • I'm just swapping the first two letters and check in the answer list(which hold answers) for duplicates, if they found already then i will skip,then i will swap the next second and third letter and keep on goes untill i found the answer. The loop will get exit if it done all the combinations, that is before entering the loop i will found the number of possible of combinations which then act as upper bound for my loop!
    – Ant's
    Commented Mar 20, 2011 at 11:20
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    That sounds.... expensive!
    – Kenneth
    Commented Mar 20, 2011 at 15:28
  • The number of combinations is n! for a n letter word assuming all letters are unique. Handling duplicate letters could be a major pain with this kind of problem but this does seem like a common Combinatorics problem to my mind.
    – JB King
    Commented Mar 24, 2011 at 22:13
  • You say you're looking for combinations, but your example is of finding permutations. Also, the number of combinations for a string of length n containing no duplicate letters is not n!; the number of permutations is.
    – user16764
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 16:22

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An algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. A design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design.

You have a function you need to calculate (the combinations of letters from a list of letters), which means you definitely need an algorithm. Once you have an algorithm, you may find that you can implement it using a reusable solution, in which case you may be able to employ a design pattern. However you cannot apply a reusable solution before you know what the solution ought to look like, so solve your problem first.

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    +1 for However you cannot apply a reusable solution before you know what the solution ought to look like, so solve your problem first.
    – Sandeepan Nath
    Commented Apr 21, 2011 at 15:12

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