chars
$word = chars($minlen, $maxlen [, $set [, $characters, $maxcount ] ... ] );
Generates a completely random word between $minlen and $maxlen in length. If $set is given, it must be
an array ref of characters to use. You can restrict occurrence of some characters by providing
($characters, $maxcount) pairs, as many as you like. $characters must be a string consisting of those
characters which may appear at most $maxcount times in the word.
Note that the length is determined via relative probability, not uniformly.
word
$word = word($minlen, $maxlen [, $lang [, $numbers [, $caps [, $minfreq, $avgfreq ] ] ] );
$word = word3($minlen, $maxlen [, $lang [, $numbers [, $caps [, $minfreq, $avgfreq ] ] ] );
Generates a random pronounceable word. The length of the returned word will be between $minlen and
$maxlen. If you supply a non-zero value for $numbers, up to that many numbers and special characters will
occur in the password. If you specify a non-zero value for $caps, up to this many characters will be
upper case. $lang is the language description to use, loaded via load_language or built-in. Built-in
languages are: 'en' (english) and 'de' (german). Contributions welcome. The default language is 'en' but
may be changed by calling load_language with a true value as third parameter. Pass undef as language to
select the current default language. $minfreq and $minsum determine quality of the password: $minfreq and
$avgfreq are the minimum frequency each quad/trigram must have and the average frequency that the
quad/trigrams must have for a word to be selected. Both are values between 0.0 and 1.0, specifying the
percentage of the maximum frequency. Higher values create less secure, better pronounceable passwords and
are slower. Useful $minfreq values are usually between 0.001 and 0.0001, useful $avgfreq values are
around 0.05 for trigrams (word3) and 0.001 for quadgrams (word).
analyze
$ratio = analyze($count,@word_params);
$ratio = analyze3($count,@word_params);
Returns a statistical(!) security ratio to measure password quality. $ratio is the ratio of passwords
chosen among all possible ones, e.g. a ratio of 0.0149 means 1.49% of the theoretical password space was
actually considered a pronounceable password. Since this analysis is only statistical, it proves
absolutely nothing if you are deeply concerned about security - but in that case you should use chars(),
not word() anyways. In reality, it says a lot about your chosen parameters if you use large values for
$count.
generate_language
$language_description = generate_language($wordlist);
Generates a language description which can be saved in a file and/or loaded with load_language. $wordlist
can be a string containing whitespace separated words, an array ref containing one word per element or a
file handle or name to read words from, one word per line7. Alternatively, you may pass an array
directly, not as reference. A language description is about 1MB in size.
If you generate a general-purpose language description for a language not yet built-in, feel free to
contribute it for inclusion into this package.
load_language
load_language($language_description, $name [, $default]);
Loads a language description which is then available in words(). $language_description is a string
returned by generate_language, $name is a name of your choice which is used to select this language as
the fifth parameter of words(). You should use the well-known ISO two letter language codes if possible,
for best interoperability.
If you specify $default with a true value, this language will be made global default language. If you
give undef as $language_description, only the default language will be changed.
random_number
$number = random_number($limit);
Returns a random integer between 0 (inclusive) and $limit (exclusive). Change this to a function of your
choice by doing something like this:
sub my_rng ($) {
...
}
{
# suppress warning about function being redefined
no warnings 'redefine';
*Crypt::GeneratePassword::random_number = \&my_rng;
}
The default implementation uses perl's rand(), which might not be appropriate for some sites.
restrict
$forbidden = restrict($word,$language);
Filters undesirable words. Returns false if the $word is allowed in language $lang, false otherwise.
Change this to a function of your choice by doing something like this:
sub my_filter ($$) {
...
}
{
no warnings 'redefine';
*Crypt::GeneratePassword::restrict = \&my_filter;
}
The default implementation scans for a few letter sequences that english or german people might find
offending, mostly because of their sexual nature. You might want to hook up a regular password checker
here, or a wordlist comparison.
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