[Python-ideas] Extremely weird itertools.permutations

[Neil Girdhar]

"It is universally agreed that a list of n distinct symbols has n! 
permutations. However, when the symbols are not distinct, the most common 
convention, in mathematics and elsewhere, seems to be to count only 
distinct permutations." — 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6534430/why-does-pythons-itertools-permutations-contain-duplicates-when-the-original.


Should we consider fixing itertools.permutations and to output only unique 
permutations (if possible, although I realize that would break code). It is 
completely non-obvious to have permutations returning duplicates. For a 
non-breaking compromise what about adding a flag?

Best,
Neil
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