Nijenhuis and Wilf [NW78]
specializes in algorithms for constructing basic combinatorial
objects such as permutations, subsets, and partitions.
Such algorithms are often very short, but they are hard to locate and
usually surprisingly subtle.
Fortran programs for all of the algorithms are provided, as well as a
discussion of the theory behind each of them.
The programs are usually short enough that it is reasonable to translate
them directly into a more modern programming language, as I did
in writing Combinatorica (see Section 
).
Both random and sequential generation algorithms are provided.
Descriptions of more recent algorithms for several problems, without code,
are provided in [Wil89].
These programs are now available from our algorithm repository WWW site. We tracked them down from Neil Sloane, who had them on a magnetic tape, while the original authors did not! In [NW78], Nijenhuis and Wilf set the proper standard of statistically testing the output distribution of each of the random generators to establish that they really appear uniform. We encourage you to do the same before using these programs, to verify that nothing has been lost in transit.