Permutations - all possible sets of numbers

Since PHP 5.5 you can use Generators. Generators save a lot of memory and are way faster (more than half compared to pc_permute()). So if you have any chance of having PHP 5.5 installed, you definitely want Generators. This snipped is ported from Python: https://stackoverflow.com/a/104436/3745311

function permutations(array $elements)
{
    if (count($elements) <= 1) {
        yield $elements;
    } else {
        foreach (permutations(array_slice($elements, 1)) as $permutation) {
            foreach (range(0, count($elements) - 1) as $i) {
                yield array_merge(
                    array_slice($permutation, 0, $i),
                    [$elements[0]],
                    array_slice($permutation, $i)
                );
            }
        }
    }
}

Sample usage:

$list = ['a', 'b', 'c'];

foreach (permutations($list) as $permutation) {
    echo implode(',', $permutation) . PHP_EOL;
}

Output:

a,b,c
b,a,c
b,c,a
a,c,b 
c,a,b
c,b,a

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function combination_number($k,$n){
    $n = intval($n);
    $k = intval($k);
    if ($k > $n){
        return 0;
    } elseif ($n == $k) {
        return 1;
    } else {
        if ($k >= $n - $k){
            $l = $k+1;
            for ($i = $l+1 ; $i <= $n ; $i++)
                $l *= $i;
            $m = 1;
            for ($i = 2 ; $i <= $n-$k ; $i++)
                $m *= $i;
        } else {
            $l = ($n-$k) + 1;
            for ($i = $l+1 ; $i <= $n ; $i++)
                $l *= $i;
            $m = 1;
            for ($i = 2 ; $i <= $k ; $i++)
                $m *= $i;            
        }
    }
    return $l/$m;
}

function array_combination($le, $set){

    $lk = combination_number($le, count($set));
    $ret = array_fill(0, $lk, array_fill(0, $le, '') );

    $temp = array();
    for ($i = 0 ; $i < $le ; $i++)
        $temp[$i] = $i;

    $ret[0] = $temp;

    for ($i = 1 ; $i < $lk ; $i++){
        if ($temp[$le-1] != count($set)-1){
            $temp[$le-1]++;
        } else {
            $od = -1;
            for ($j = $le-2 ; $j >= 0 ; $j--)
                if ($temp[$j]+1 != $temp[$j+1]){
                    $od = $j;
                    break;
                }
            if ($od == -1)
                break;
            $temp[$od]++;
            for ($j = $od+1 ; $j < $le ; $j++)    
                $temp[$j] = $temp[$od]+$j-$od;
        }
        $ret[$i] = $temp;
    }
    for ($i = 0 ; $i < $lk ; $i++)
        for ($j = 0 ; $j < $le ; $j++)
            $ret[$i][$j] = $set[$ret[$i][$j]];   

    return $ret;
}

Here is how to use it:

To get the number of combinations:

combination_number(3,10); // returns number of combinations of ten-elements set.

To get all possible combinations:

$mySet = array("A","B","C","D","E","F");
array_combination(3, $mySet); // returns all possible combinations of 3 elements of six-elements set.

Hope You make use of that.

You're looking for the permutations formula:

nPk = n!/(n-k)!

In your case, you have 9 entries and you want to choose all of them, that's 9P9 = 9! = 362880

You can find a PHP algorithm to permutate in recipe 4.26 of O'Reilly's "PHP Cookbook".

pc_permute(array(0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8));

Copied in from O'Reilly:

function pc_permute($items, $perms = array( )) {
    if (empty($items)) { 
        print join(' ', $perms) . "\n";
    }  else {
        for ($i = count($items) - 1; $i >= 0; --$i) {
             $newitems = $items;
             $newperms = $perms;
             list($foo) = array_splice($newitems, $i, 1);
             array_unshift($newperms, $foo);
             pc_permute($newitems, $newperms);
         }
    }
}

Since this question often comes up in Google Search results, here's a modified version of the accepted answer that returns all combinations in an array and passes them as a return value of the function.

function pc_permute($items, $perms = array( )) {
    if (empty($items)) {
        $return = array($perms);
    }  else {
        $return = array();
        for ($i = count($items) - 1; $i >= 0; --$i) {
             $newitems = $items;
             $newperms = $perms;
         list($foo) = array_splice($newitems, $i, 1);
             array_unshift($newperms, $foo);
             $return = array_merge($return, pc_permute($newitems, $newperms));
         }
    }
    return $return;
}

To use:

$value = array('1', '2', '3');
print_r(pc_permute($value));