The Perl Toolchain Summit needs more sponsors. If your company depends on Perl, please support this very important event.
 / 
randpass-1.08
River stage zero No dependents
++
/ randpass

NAME

randpass - generate random passwords and passphrases

SYNOPSIS

randpass [ -w | -p NUMWORDS ] [ -s WORDSOURCE ] [ -l WORDLEN ]

DESCRIPTION

randpass generates random passwords and passphrases to your specifications.

OPTIONS

-w, --word

Generate passwords (the default).

-p, --phrase num

Generate passphrases with the specified number of words. The passphrase that is generated will not contain duplicate words (e.g., urial hayseed dumpish urial). This may not be a range.

When this option is used, options -c and -C are ignored.

-n, --count num

Generate the specified number of passwords or passphrases. This may not be a range.

-l, --word-length number-or-range

The length of the password, or of each word in the passphrase.

If a range is specified (e.g., --word-length 8-14) then the length of the password (or of the words in the passphrase) will fall randomly within that range (including both endpoints). Half-open ranges (e.g., --word-length 3-) are not allowed.

The default is 7-14 for passwords and 4-7 for passphrases.

-c, --chars string-or-setname

The set of characters (specified as a sequence of characters) used in generating a password. This is currently ignored if passphrases are being generated.

You may specify a named set instead. Choose among these...

:std
  ('A'..'H', 'J'..'N', 'P'..'Z', ('a'..'k', 'm', 'n', 'p'..'z') x 2, '2'..'9')

This is the default. It omits digits and letters that may be mistaken for each other (l, I, 1; o, O, 0).

:alpha
  ('A'..'Z', 'a'..'z')
:lower
  ('a'..'z')
:ALPHA or :upper
  ('A'..'Z')
:alphanum
  ('A'..'Z', 'a'..'z', '0'..'9')
:num
  ('0'..'9')
:hex

Hexadecimal digits (lowercase).

  ('0'..'9', 'a'..'f')
:HEX

Hexadecimal digits (uppercase).

  ('0'..'9', 'A'..'F')
:bool

Binary digits.

  (0, 1)
:bin

Binary data (bytes 0 through 255).

  ("\x00".."\xFF")
:bin7

Binary data (bytes 0 through 127).

  ("\x00".."\x7F")

Repeated use of this option is cumulative, so (for example) the following will generate passwords that may be expected to contain (on average) twice as many upper-case letters as lower-case letters:

    randpass -c :upper -c :upper -c :lower
-C, --range begin-end

Specify a range of (ASCII) characters to use. As is true of -c, use of multiple -C options is cumulative.

Options -c and -C may be freely interspersed, and the order in which they are given is not significant, so the following are all equivalent:

    randpass -c :upper -c :lower -c :num
    randpass -C a-z    -C 0-9    -C A-Z
    randpass -c :num   -c :upper -C a-z
-r, --required [num#]string-or-setname

Specifies that all generated passwords (not passphrases) must have at least num (default 1) occurrences of the characters specified by string-or-setname, which may be a named set (e.g., :alphanum) or a string of required characters (e.g., aeiou).

For example, the following will generate passwords with at least 2 digits and at least 1 of the given punctuation marks:

    randpass -c :alphanum -c '!@%' -r '2#:num' -r '!@%'

Any required characters must be specified in a -c or -C option.

-M, --maximum-rejects num

The maximum number of passwords that may be rejected (default 5,000). If this is exceeded, an error will result.

-s, --source file

Specify the source file from which words will be drawn in generating a passphrase. This file will typically consist of a single word per line (but creative uses of randpass may do otherwise for interesting results).

The default is /usr/share/dict/words. The special file name - may be used to specify standard input.

Note: If the source file doesn't have enough lines (of sufficient length) to generate the full passphrase, the program exits with code 1 and prints a suitable error message to standard error.

-F, --freli

Use the FRELI word list (/usr/share/dict/freli when generating passphrases. (See http://www.nkuitse.com/freli/ for more information about FRELI.)

-j, --join string

When generating a passphrase, connect the words with the specified string rather than a space.

-P

Uses the author's favorite options by default (-p 2 -l 3-5) and adds the option -s /usr/share/dict/freli if there is a file at that location.

-V, --version

Display version information.

-h, --help

Display help.

AUTHOR

Paul Hoffman ( nkuitse AT cpan DOT org )

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2003-2008 Paul M. Hoffman.

LICENSE

This script is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.