pwgen

A password generation tool written in Crystal.

It is a port of the C-language pwgen utility, but the options have been modified to kojix2's preferences, and the output is colorized.

Build

shards build --release

Binary: bin/pwgen

Usage

pwgen [length] [count]

Generate 5 passwords of 12 characters:

pwgen 12 5

Options:

  -C, --no-capitals         Don't include capital letters
  -N, --no-numerals         Don't include numbers
  -S, --no-symbols          Don't include special symbols
  -A, --no-ambiguous        Don't include ambiguous characters
  -V, --no-vowels           Don't include vowels
  -E, --exclude CHARS       Remove given characters
  -r, --random              Generate completely random passwords
  -1, --one                 Single column
  -m, --no-color            Disable ANSI color output
  -n, --num NUM             Number of passwords to generate
  -H, --sha1 FILE[#seed]    Use sha1 hash of given file
  -h, --help                Print this help message
  -v, --version             Print version

Examples

Deterministic generation:

pwgen -H /path/to/file#seed 12 5

Implementation

• Default: phoneme-based pronounceable passwords
• Output is colorized by default: uppercase letters, digits, and symbols use ANSI colors
• --no-color: disable ANSI color output when piping or saving plain text is preferred
• -r: cryptographically secure random (Random::Secure)
• -H: SHA1-based PRNG for reproducible output
• Uses Crystal's Random::Secure backed by the OS CSPRNG

Tests

crystal spec

Acknowledgements

This project is a Crystal port of the original C pwgen utility by Theodore Ts'o. The original implementation and design are available at: https://github.com/tytso/pwgen

License

MIT