random password generation

[Amit Babu]

What sort of algorithm can be used for random password generation? I do not want a very complex algorithm. A simple but effective approach would be highly appreciated.
[ December 13, 2005: Message edited by: Amit Babu ]

[Jesper de Jong]

Simply create a java.util.Random object and write a loop to have it generate some random numbers (integers), and cast them to characters. For example:

Random r = new Random();
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < 8; ++i) {
    sb.append((char)('a' + r.nextInt(26)));
}
System.out.println(sb.toString());

[William Brogden]

Since certain character pairs are hard to distinguish in many fonts, you might consider discarding upper case i and l (I l) upper case o and zero (O 0 ) etc.
Those of us with aging vision will thank you.
Bill

[Stan James]

I select random characters from an array:

characters = "bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxz23456789" ... get Byte Array ...

I leave out I O and 1 0 to avoid confusion as suggested above, and all vowels to avoid offensive words in any language except Qwlghm.

Any time this random password question comes up, I drag up CompuServe, the great online giant of the 80s and 2400 baud modems. Their passwords were two randomly chosen dictionary words. Mine was "water boldly". It's certainly easier to remember (for the last 25 years) than a random string of letters and digits.

[Amit Babu]

Originally posted by Jesper de Jong:
Simply create a java.util.Random object and write a loop to have it generate some random numbers (integers), and cast them to characters. For example:

Random r = new Random();
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for (int i = 0; i < 8; ++i) {
    sb.append((char)('a' + r.nextInt(26)));
}
System.out.println(sb.toString());

This is eaxctly what I had in mind.
Glad to know that this could be a good algorithm.