Generating password using Python

Question

I have written a Python program to generate password. There is a glitch because it is not properly shuffled. Please suggest some methods to do it. Also suggest better methods for the same.

import random 
import array

digits = ['0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9']
lowercase = ['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z']
uppercase = ['A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J','K','L','M','N','O','P','Q','R','S','T','U','V','W','X','Y','Z']
Symbols = ['!','@','#','$','%','*','&']

mixture = digits + lowercase + uppercase + Symbols

random_digit = random.choice(digits)
random_lowercase = random.choice(lowercase)
random_uppercase = random.choice(uppercase)
random_symbol = random.choice(Symbols) 

Password = random_digit + random_lowercase + random_uppercase + random_symbol

length = random.randint(8,12)

for x in range (length) :
    Password = Password + random.choice(mixture) 

print(Password)

What's the issue here? What do you expect and what are you getting instead? — Jarvis, Dec 29 '20 at 12:26
I ran your code and generated `5uH%idWn!$aDQAT`. Can you explain how is this string not shuffled? — Jarvis, Dec 29 '20 at 12:28
Well, you could do something like: randomize between 1 and 4 and then select either digit, case and symbol and append to your password. But this is quite bad way of doing passwords. — pinegulf, Dec 29 '20 at 12:29
@Jarvis I think the issue might be that it's always digit-case-case -special pattern. — pinegulf, Dec 29 '20 at 12:30
@ShubhamKumar check this out: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7479442/high-quality-simple-random-password-generator — pinegulf, Dec 29 '20 at 12:32
For improvement, you don't need to list all the characters you want to use, the `string` module provides you with those characters. you could do `mixture = string.ascii_letters + string.digits + string.punctuation` and the result would be the same, kinda. — Shinra tensei, Dec 29 '20 at 12:34

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 29 '20 at 12:32

2

To generate your original mixture you can leverage the character sets available in string. Also note you don't need a list of individual chars, instead a single str is also an iterable sequence for this purpose.

>>> from string import ascii_letters as letters
>>> from string import digits as digits
>>> symbols = '!@#$%*&'
>>> mixture = digits + letters + symbols
>>> mixture
'0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ!@#$%*&'

Then to generate some example passwords you can use random.choices with the k argument specifying the length to sample.

>>> import random
>>> ''.join(random.choices(mixture, k=random.randint(8,12)))
'tF6iUwki1Ir'
>>> ''.join(random.choices(mixture, k=random.randint(8,12)))
'HpPJI6@m&'
>>> ''.join(random.choices(mixture, k=random.randint(8,12)))
'$KKzoiD&'

Note that random.choices allows duplicate characters, if you want them all to be unique then random.sample would be preferred.

answered Dec 29 '20 at 12:32

Cory Kramer

114,268
16
167
218

1

You should be using `secrets` instead of the `random` for this purpose. *In particularly, secrets should be used in preference to the default pseudo-random number generator in the random module, which is designed for modelling and simulation, not security or cryptography.* https://docs.python.org/3/library/secrets.html#recipes-and-best-practices – sshow Dec 29 '20 at 12:57
@Cory It is showing up module random has no attributes 'choices'. – Shubham Kumar Dec 29 '20 at 13:06
@sshow Somebody might have programmed that too. So how it is that one will perform better than other? – Shubham Kumar Dec 29 '20 at 13:09
1

@ShubhamKumar What version of Python are you using? `random.choices` is new to Python 3.6. Otherwise can do something like `''.join(random.choice(mixture) for _ in range(random.randint(8.12)))` – Cory Kramer Dec 29 '20 at 13:11

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 29 '20 at 13:27

0

I am just working on the method suggested by Cory Kramer.

from string import ascii_letters as letters
from string import digits as digits

symbols = '!@#$%&*'

mixture = digits + letters + symbols

import random
print('' .join(random.choice(mixture) for x in range (random.randint(8,12))))

answered Dec 29 '20 at 13:27

Shubham Kumar

134
7

Wow it is more crispier than my previous one. – Shubham Kumar Dec 29 '20 at 13:28
you might want to use `random.shuffle` on the resulting list. also https://docs.python.org/3/library/secrets.html might be good to know about – Sam Mason Dec 30 '20 at 16:24

Generating password using Python

2 Answers2