#! /usr/bin/perl -ws # # 2001/11/09 dwl use strict; use constant DEFAULT => 16; use constant SRC => '/dev/urandom'; use constant LINE_WIDTH => 72; use vars qw/$v/; my $chars_wanted = shift || DEFAULT; my $re_class = shift || 'A-Za-z0-9'; my $re = qr/^[$re_class]$/; open R, SRC or die "Random source (@{[SRC]} not available: $!.\n"; my $char; my $spew = ''; while( $chars_wanted ) { read( R, $char, 1 ) or die "Failed to read 1 char from @{[SRC]}: $!\n"; if( $char =~ $re ) { $spew .= $char; --$chars_wanted; } } close R; print "$spew\n"; exit unless defined $v; print "\n"; my %verbose; while( ) { chomp; my( $char, $name ) = ($_ =~ /^(.) (.*)$/); $verbose{$char} = $name; } my $line = ''; my $len = 0; for( split //, $spew ) { my $case = ($_ =~ s/([A-Z])/lc $1/e) ? 'upper-' : ''; my $description = (0 == $len ? '' : ' ' ) . $case . $verbose{$_}; my $desc_len = length $description; if( $len + $desc_len > LINE_WIDTH ) { print "\n"; $len = 0; --$desc_len; # remove space $description = substr( $description, 1 ); } print $description; $len += $desc_len; } print "\n"; =head1 NAME spew - spew random characters =head1 SYNOPSIS B [B<-v>] [count] [character-class] =head1 DESCRIPTION Read characters from a device that emits random data (such as /dev/urandom), and print them out. This can be used as the basis for creating passwords, or manual IPSec authentification keys (using a count of 64 or more is recommended). If C is omitted, the value of 16 is used. If C is omitted, the character class C is used. To specify hexadecimal characters, use C<0-9a-f>. To use all the standard printable ASCII characters use the obfuscated C or C< -~> character classes. Note that the latter class probably needs quoting to avoid being clobbered by the shell. =head1 OPTIONS =over 5 =item B<-v> Verbose. After printing out the character string, reprint the string using words, suitable for reading out over the telephone. For instance C would be rendered as C. =back =head1 EXAMPLES B<% spew> GByL4t9xOm8oNgZ8 B<% spew -v 6> qQlaRO quebec upper-quebec lima alpha upper-romeo upper-oscar B<% spew 56 0-1> 10100000001101000010111001010011001001100101011110001101 B<% spew -v 40 ' -~'> Q4EO[ZTs;p{nikzy>3&V@W]ht{bMUu.DCp< or something similar. Not portable to Win32 platforms, due to the lack of a /dev/random analogue. To be really paranoid, on OpenBSD, one should use /dev/srandom, which is cryptographically strong. Unfortunately, it blocks too much to be of any practical use (I guess I need to buy a hardware generator). =head1 COPYRIGHT Copyright (c) 2001 David Landgren. This script is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. =head1 AUTHOR David "grinder" Landgren grinder on perlmonks (http://www.perlmonks.org/) eval {join chr(64) => qw[landgren bpinet.com]} =cut __DATA__ a alpha b bravo c charlie d delta e echo f foxtrot g golf h hotel i india j juliet k kilo l lima m mike n november o oscar p papa q quebec r romeo s sierra t tango u uniform v victor w whiskey x xray y yankee z zulu 0 zero 1 one 2 two 3 three 4 four 5 five 6 six 7 seven 8 eight 9 nine ! excla space " double-quote # hash $ dollar % percent & ampersand ' single-quote ( left-paren ) right-paren * star + plus , comma - minus . dot / slash : colon ; semi-colon < less-than = equals > greater-than ? ques @ at [ left-square \ backslash ] right-square ^ caret _ underscore ` backtick { left-curly | pipe } right curley ~ twiddle