permutations of two lists in python

Question

I have two lists like:

list1 = [\'square\',\'circle\',\'triangle\']
list2 = [\'red\',\'green\']

How can I create all permutations of these

Answer 1

I think what you are looking for is the product of two lists, not the permutations:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import itertools
list1=['square','circle','triangle'] 
list2=['red','green']
for shape,color in itertools.product(list1,list2):
    print(shape+color)

yields

squarered
squaregreen
circlered
circlegreen
trianglered
trianglegreen

If you'd like both squarered and redsquare, then you could do something like this:

for pair in itertools.product(list1,list2):
    for a,b in itertools.permutations(pair,2):
        print(a+b)

or, to make it into a list:

l=[a+b for pair in itertools.product(list1,list2)
   for a,b in itertools.permutations(pair,2)]
print(l)

yields

['squarered', 'redsquare', 'squaregreen', 'greensquare', 'circlered', 'redcircle', 'circlegreen', 'greencircle', 'trianglered', 'redtriangle', 'trianglegreen', 'greentriangle']