Python every possible combination of a string

Use itertools.permutations and list comprehensions

from itertools import permutations
[''.join(j) for i in range(1,len(x) + 1) for j in  permutations(x, i)]

Output

['g', 'o', 'd', 'go', 'gd', 'og', 'od', 'dg', 'do', 'god', 'gdo', 'ogd', 'odg', 'dgo', 'dog']

You want to use itertools. From what you write, it sounds like you want to use itertools.permutation.

>>> import itertools
>>> letters = 'god'
>>> combinations = []
>>> for i in range(len(letters)):
...     combinations.extend(
...         [''.join(x) for x in itertools.permutations(letters, i + 1)])
>>> print(combinations)
['g', 'o', 'd', 'go', 'gd', 'og', 'od', 'dg', 'do', 'god', 'gdo', 'ogd', 'odg', 'dgo', 'dog']

What you're trying to do here is to take the powerset of whatever string you pass in. What you'll want to do is convert that string into a list of characters, and then use the definition of powersets to use simple list extension to create what you are looking for.

def list_powerset(lst): # the power set of the empty set has one element, the empty set result = [[]] for x in lst: # for every additional element in our set # the power set consists of the subsets that don't # contain this element (just take the previous power set) # plus the subsets that do contain the element (use list # comprehension to add [x] onto everything in the # previous power set) result.extend([subset + [x] for subset in result]) return result

The above code was found at http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Power_set#Python

import itertools

def _itersubs(x):
    for i in range(1, len(x)+1):
        yield from itertools.permutations(x, i)
        # before 3.4, replace with:
        # for y in itertools.permutations(x, i): yield y

def thefuncyouwant(x):
    return list(_itersubs(x))

I'm not sure you actually want a list of 2 ** len(x) items -- it will take a lot of memory for any x not very short -- but, it's what you asked for, so here it is. The iterator yielding one item at a time is obviously more natural and probably preferable, but just wrapping it in a list call will eat up just as much memory as you crave!-)