Password generator
Here's script for a function to generate random passwords using R. You can either make random strings (style = 'rando') or use dictionary words (style = 'words'). Both of these options meet most modern password requirements (e.g., at least 1 uppercase letter, 1 number, 1 special character), but include custamizability in the password length.
This is behind the curve in that many web browsers and other programs will do this for you, but this was more fun.
Please give it a try! If you have R but aren't entirely sure how to use this, all you need to do is copy and paste the file into a script (or directly into the terminal), run the first line of code, which will build the function and store it in your global environment, so now you can use it just like any other function (while in the same R session). The last two lines provide an example for each of the two methods.
You can also follow my programming updates at my GitHub site.
genPass <- function(nChar = 20, nSpchar = 2, ncLet = 5, nLet = 10, nNum = 5, style = 'rando', nWord = 4, replace = T) {
specChar <- c('!','?',':','-','_','@','#','$','%','&','*','+','/','^','(',')','[',']','{','}','~',"'",',','.')
if(style == 'rando') {
if(nChar > 6) {
repeat {pw1 <- sample(c(specChar, 0:9, LETTERS, letters), nChar) #works, magically.
if(!all(!all(is.na(pmatch(pw1, specChar))),
!all(is.na(pmatch(pw1, 0:9))),
!all(is.na(pmatch(pw1, LETTERS))),
!all(is.na(pmatch(pw1, letters)))) == F) break
}
pw2 <- toString(pw1)
pw <- gsub(',', '', gsub("\\s", "",pw2))
return(pw)} else if(nChar > 3) {
repeat {pw1 <- sample(c(specChar, 0:9, LETTERS, letters), nChar) #works, magically.
if(!all(!all(is.na(pmatch(pw1, specChar))),
!all(is.na(pmatch(pw1, 0:9))),
!all(is.na(pmatch(pw1, LETTERS))),
!all(is.na(pmatch(pw1, letters)))) == F) break
}
pw2 <- toString(pw1)
pw <- gsub(',', '', gsub("\\s", "",pw2))
return(c('Warning! A secure password requires at least 8 characters. 20 is recommended.', pw))} else if(nChar < 4) {return('Error! At least 4 characters are required to work.')}
} else
if(style == 'words') {
if(Sys.info()['sysname'] == 'Darwin')
{dic <- read.table("/usr/share/dict/words")} else
if(Sys.info()['sysname'] == 'Windows') {dic <- read.table('%AppData%/Microsoft/Spelling/default.acl')} else
if('try-error' %in% calss(read.table(file = 'https://users.cs.duke.edu/~ola/ap/linuxwords'))) {return('Cannot find local words list. Please connect to the internet.')}
else {dic <- read.table(file = 'https://users.cs.duke.edu/~ola/ap/linuxwords')}
wrd <- sample(levels(dic$V1), nWord)
if (nWord > 1) {
repeat {c1 <- sample(c(specChar, 0:9, LETTERS), 3)
if(!all(!all(is.na(pmatch(c1, specChar))),
!all(is.na(pmatch(c1, 0:9))),
!all(is.na(pmatch(c1, LETTERS)))) == F) break
}
} else {return('Error: must contain at least 2 words!')}
wpw1 <- sample(c(c1, wrd))
wpw2 <- toString(wpw1)
wpw <- gsub(',', '', gsub("\\s", "",wpw2))
if(nchar(wpw) > 127) {return(c(substr(wpw, 1, 127), 'Notice: normal character string length reached. Password has been truncated to 127 characters.'))} else return(wpw)
} else {return("Error: style must be 'rando' or 'words'")}
}
genPass(style = 'words', nWord = 2)
genPass(nChar = 4)
