in reply to
Handling elements of an array of array references, where the function calls for an array?
AM gave you a valuable hint about shuffling and I second mbethke's suggestion on rather testing
the user provided password with an appropriate password checker.
Despite the security issues, here's a hint to you Perl problem using your original code with some annotations and corrections:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my @chars = ( "a" .. "k", "m","n", "p" .. "z");
my @upchars = ("A".."N","P".."Z"); # <-- NOTE: "P..Z" -> "P".."Z"
my @nona = qw(! @ $ % & ( ) + = { } [ ] < > ~);
my @nums = (0 .. 9);
my $lc = \@chars;
my $uc = \@upchars;
my $na = \@nona;
my $nu = \@nums;
my @types = ($lc, $uc, $na, $nu); # compact: my @types = (\@chars
+, \@upchars, ...
my $a = join("", @{$types[3]}[ map { rand @{$types[3]} } ( 1 .. 4 ) ]
+);
$a .= join("", @{$types[2]}[ map { rand @{$types[2]} } ( 1 .. 4 ) ]
+);
$a .= join("", @{$types[1]}[ map { rand @{$types[1]} } ( 1 .. 4 ) ]
+);
$a .= join("", @{$types[0]}[ map { rand @{$types[0]} } ( 1 .. 4 ) ]
+);
# ^--deref/arrayslice ^-- deref for number of el
+ements
# nobody complained about using '$a' yet, so I don't do either ;-)
print "My selection is $a \n";
# you should shuffle and shorten the result
exit;
__DATA__
My selection is 0548)~}+QRVKzkkt
My selection is 7922&)(&AAZZwiaw
My selection is 5263+!@>VXXBaezt
Enforcing someone to use e.g. 0548)~}+QRVKzkkt as a password just increases post-it sales... ;-)
