How does that work? Well it depends on nested_for, which should be pushed somewhere else and documented. In fact it is useful enough that I'd want to see something like that on CPAN. Lo and behold, it has been put on CPAN! See Algorithm::Loops' NestedLoops function.

Oh no. That's utter *(*^%&. The relationship between the code you posted (attempt 1), and tye's NestedLoops() is as that between a Ferrari 599 and an Ox cart. tye's is highly tuned and blazingly fast. Yours--dog slow.

I fully understand how NestedLoops() works, I just cannot wrap my brain around the interface.

And the reason why I did that is that you were criticizing me for using so many features.

Hmm. The funny bit is, I don't think I had even seen your code when I posted. Either way, my critisisms were aimed solely at the Python code.

About performance, that was obviously not a goal of mine. But even so, if every microsecond it takes to generate each answer adds 177 years on the overall task, then neither of our solutions are going to get through all of the 8 character passwords any time soon.

Maybe not with a 93 character set, but maybe for a 26 char set. Then each microsecond is only 58 hours. A long long time, but doable--if you don't waste time with overly complicated algorithms.