tinypw

A tiny, fast CLI tool to generate random passwords.

Motivation

I wanted to learn Rust. Additionally, I often need to quickly generate passwords, and since I usually work in a terminal, a CLI tool is highly convenient.

Usage

Default behaviour:

> tinypw
Password: GLkuLb(RsK55Y(Y8
[███████████████░░░░░░░░░]  63.7% good 🙂

Set the length with tinypw -l 20:

> tinypw -l 20
Password: Fphb5nCbg6XZscn$5zD*
[██████████████████████░░]  90.8% strong 😎

Define the character set with -m <mode> where mode is a combination of letters:

• u = include uppercase A–Z
• l = include lowercase a–z
• n = include digits 0–9
• s = include symbols !#$&()*+/
• e = exclude similar-looking characters: i l 1 o 0 O

Example: just lowercase letters and numbers:

> tinypw -l 20 -m ln
Password: hzdtx57jj2horb0x8dqh
[█████████████████████░░░]  86.8% strong 😎

Add extra characters with -x <extra_chars>.

Example: length 20, use uppercase, lowercase and numbers and also include ;:?!"'

> tinypw -l 20 -m uln -x ";:?\!\"'"
Password: wlw7qp!9fEnataRS7ap:
[█████████████████████░░░]  86.8% strong 😎

Copy to clipboard with -c:

> tinypw -c
Password: HLCY2vvsanaQurdG
[████████████████░░░░░░░░]  67.7% strong 😎
Password copied to clipboard.

Quiet mode: print only the password with -q:

> tinypw -q
HLCY2vvsanaQurdG

Planned for the future

• Support for quiet mode and just return the password
• Generate multiple passwords with parameter -n

Defaults

• Length: 16
• Mode: ulnse (upper, lower, numbers, symbols; exclude similar)
• Similar-looking characters excluded set: il1o0O
• Symbols used: !#$&()*+/

Install

• With Rust installed: clone this repository and run cargo build --release.
• Optional: add to PATH: copy target/release/tinypw somewhere on your PATH.
• From source without a release profile: cargo run -- followed by options shown below.

How it works (brief)

• The CLI parses flags using the clap crate.
• It builds a base character set from your chosen mode, optionally excluding similar characters and adding extra chars.
• A password is generated by sampling uniformly at random from that base set for the chosen length using crate rand.

License

• MIT. See LICENSE.