How to reorder string variable x factorial different ways?

[bplus]

At the risk of hijacking  Circlotron's post further,     thanks @bplus. I was aware of the permutatins thing and its associated problem with expansion, but couldn't see a way around it.
Not sure what you meant in your last line, about filing the data... could you elaborate a little? It sounds interesting.

because it does take so long to calculate all the permutaions of 10 items i saved the array calculated to a file
here, as i recall it took hours to calculate for 10 digits 0 to 9 starting at 0123456789
and ending at 9876543210

well the forum took 5 mins to tell me the file is too big, i wonder if it were zipped? brb

yep downloaded and checked, it appears to be all there in order. i found out i had a 9 digits file too.