Brute Force Permutation Swapping - c++

Question

I've been working on a brute force algorithm to generate all permutations of a given set. Eventually, I want to feed each of these permutations into a nxn matrix to test if it is a valid magic square or not.
--I KNOW THAT THERE IS A WAY TO GENERATE A MAGIC SQUARE EASILY--
That is not what I want to do, though. I'm focusing on the brute force aspect of it.
For a set of 3 elements, it works wonderfully. However, once I use 4 or more elements, I lose out on a few permutations. Just from looking at the output of 4, I am missing 7 permutations.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
//ms = magic square
//n = size
void perm(int ms[], int n) {
int pivot = 0;
int index = 0;
int pivBit = 1;
int fin = 0;
int hold = 0;
//While we are not finished
while (fin == 0) {
//Incriment the index
++index;
if (index >= n) {
index = 0;
}
//if index is equal to the pivot
if (index == pivot) {
//Is this the first time visiting the pivot?
if (pivBit == 0) {
//Are we at the beginning again?
if (index == 0 && pivot == 0)
{
fin = 1;
}
pivBit = 1;
++index;
}
//Second time visiting?
else {
pivBit = 0;
++pivot;
if (pivot >= n) {
pivot = 0;
}
}
}
//If we are out of bounds
if (index >= n) {
index = 0;
}
//swap
hold = ms[index];
ms[index] = ms[pivot];
ms[pivot] = hold;
for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
cout << ms[i];
if (i < n - 1) {
cout << ", ";
}
else {
cout << endl;
}
}
}
}
int main() {
cout << "Are you ready to brute force, my brother?" << endl;
//Set
int magicsquare[] = { 1, 2, 3, 4};
int size = 4;
perm(magicsquare, size);
getchar();
return 0;
}
My output is:
2 1 3 4
3 1 2 4
4 1 2 3
1 4 2 3
1 2 4 3
1 3 4 2
3 1 4 2
3 4 1 2
3 4 2 1
2 4 3 1
2 3 4 1
2 3 1 4
4 3 1 2
4 2 1 3
4 2 3 1
1 2 3 4
2 1 3 4
Looking at it, I can already see that I am missing both 1 4 3 2 and 1 3 2 4.
Where've I gone wrong in my algorithm?

Answer 1

The wiki article on permutation includes a common algorithm used to produce all permutations in lexicographic order, starting with an array of sequentially increasing integers, ending with that array reversed. wiki next permutation.
If dealing with an array of objects, you can generate an array of indices 0 through n-1 and use next permutation on the indices to produce all permutations of the array of objects.
You can also do a web search for next permutation to find similar algorithms. The recursive ones produce all permutations, but not in lexicographic order.

Answer 2

The simplest way to generate all permutations is recursive. For each i, swap the i'th element to the 0 position. Then recursively find all permutations of of the remaining array.
int buf[1000], n; // better to wrap these in a class...
void permute(int *a, int a_len) {
if (a_len == 1) {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) printf("%d ", buf[i]);
printf("\n");
} else {
for (int i = 0; i < a_len; i++) {
swap(a, 0, i);
permute(a + 1, a_len - 1);
swap(a, 0, i);
}
}
}
void run(int buf_len) {
for (int i = 0; i < buf_len; i++) buf[i] = i + 1;
n = buf_len;
permute(buf, buf_len);
}
This assumes no repeated elements in the original array. It's not to hard to have it take repeated elements into account.