Generate Random Passwords with Perl

Luke Hebert

- 2 minutes read - 228 words

Need a strong password in a hurry? A single Perl command can generate one for you right from the terminal, no extra packages required.

The Script

The attached script, genpass.pl, uses Perl’s built-in rand and character-set selection to produce a random password of a configurable length. By default it generates a 16-character string drawn from uppercase letters, lowercase letters, digits, and a small set of special characters.

📎 Download genpass.pl

Usage

Run the script directly from the command line:

perl genpass.pl

To change the password length, pass the desired number of characters as the first argument:

perl genpass.pl 24

Why Perl?

Perl ships with most Unix and Linux systems, so you do not need to install anything extra. The one-liner approach keeps the solution lightweight: no dependencies, no configuration files, and a result in under a second.

Note

The script relies on Perl’s rand function, which is suitable for general-purpose password generation. For security-critical contexts (for example, generating keys for production systems), prefer a tool that draws from the OS entropy pool, such as openssl rand or yarn random.

Tips

  • Pipe the output to xclip or pbcopy to copy the password straight to your clipboard.
  • Combine with tr -d if you want to strip a specific character set from the result.
  • Store generated passwords in a password manager immediately; do not leave them in shell history.