Just FYI, perhaps you missed this bit from the root node:

do {
    print "@ARGV\n";
} while( nextPermut­e(@ARGV) );
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which is also why I called my routine "nextPermute".

Also note that dragonchild's and my iterators can be reused. For yours to be reusable you probably want to change:

      return if $i == -1;
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to

      if(  $i == -1  ) {
         $first= 1;
         return;
      }
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