Generate list of all possible permutations of a string

It's better to use backtracking

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

void swap(char *a, char *b) {
    char temp;
    temp = *a;
    *a = *b;
    *b = temp;
}

void print(char *a, int i, int n) {
    int j;
    if(i == n) {
        printf("%s\n", a);
    } else {
        for(j = i; j <= n; j++) {
            swap(a + i, a + j);
            print(a, i + 1, n);
            swap(a + i, a + j);
        }
    }
}

int main(void) {
    char a[100];
    gets(a);
    print(a, 0, strlen(a) - 1);
    return 0;
}

There are several ways to do this. Common methods use recursion, memoization, or dynamic programming. The basic idea is that you produce a list of all strings of length 1, then in each iteration, for all strings produced in the last iteration, add that string concatenated with each character in the string individually. (the variable index in the code below keeps track of the start of the last and the next iteration)

Some pseudocode:

list = originalString.split('')
index = (0,0)
list = [""]
for iteration n in 1 to y:
  index = (index[1], len(list))
  for string s in list.subset(index[0] to end):
    for character c in originalString:
      list.add(s + c)

you'd then need to remove all strings less than x in length, they'll be the first (x-1) * len(originalString) entries in the list.