oh yes my bad

permutations refers to the name of the function i.e., the user is using a recursive function as his solution

yes, but as i recall you should import itertools module first before use the permutations method, and clearly there is no import command in the code above. does this "permutations" refered to the name of the function?

e.g.,

permutations = 'abcde'
print(permutations[:2]+permutations[2+1:])

will return

abde

what does "permutations(s[:i]+s[i+1:])" do?

I figured it out. Variable "result" is limited and unique to the scope of each function call.

Not sure if anyone is going to read this but how is this recursion able to retain the result list? Won't result be cleared each time permutations is run?