You'll find many other algorithms in Permutations and more still in Combinatorics.

The first I found the first by typing "permutations" in the search box top left on every PerlMonks screen. The second (amongst others) by typing the same search string into the top field after clicking the super_search link also at the top of the screen

I think you'll find Set::CrossProduct does what you want.

merlyn has Permutations and combinations that does exactly that.

And if most people reading this knew what a permutation was they would have known that the original poster wasn't asking for permutations. Search engines are great..unless you don't actually know what you are supposed to be looking for.

Of 5 solutions, the first nailed it, and the fourth was correct only because the poster of the link didn't know what a permutation was either. The other 3 - including your suggestion - were wrong because you were mislead by the word choice.

Many other valid solutions exist. Quantum::Superpositions being an obfuscated one and

for (glob '{1,2,3,4,5}\ {q,w,e,r,t}\ {junk,crap,spam,crud,kipple}') {
  print "$_\n";
}
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being a short one. Or you could try figuring out Re (tilly) 1 (perl): What Happened...(perils of porting from c)...

The solution I offered at that time looked something like this:

my @array = (
  [ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ],
  [qw( q w e r t )],
  [qw( junk crap spam crud kipple )],
);

my @all_combinations = combin( \@array );

# where combin() is defined as follows:

sub combin {
  my( $ar, @stack ) = @_;
  return \@stack unless @$ar;
  my( $head, @a ) = @$ar;
  map { combin( \@a, @stack, $_ ) } @$head
}
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