shell/bash generate random alphanumeric string

bash.generate.random.alphanumeric.string.sh

#!/bin/bash
# bash generate random alphanumeric string
#

# bash generate random 32 character alphanumeric string (upper and lowercase) and 
NEW_UUID=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1)

# bash generate random 32 character alphanumeric string (lowercase only)
cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1

# Random numbers in a range, more randomly distributed than $RANDOM which is not
# very random in terms of distribution of numbers.

# bash generate random number between 0 and 9
cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc '0-9' | fold -w 256 | head -n 1 | head --bytes 1

# bash generate random number between 0 and 99
NUMBER=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc '0-9' | fold -w 256 | head -n 1 | sed -e 's/^0*//' | head --bytes 2)
if [ "$NUMBER" == "" ]; then
  NUMBER=0
fi

# bash generate random number between 0 and 999
NUMBER=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc '0-9' | fold -w 256 | head -n 1 | sed -e 's/^0*//' | head --bytes 3)
if [ "$NUMBER" == "" ]; then
  NUMBER=0
fi

Thanks :)

If you need lowercase, tack another pipe and tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' there.

Thanks!

Didn't google recently suffered downtime due to the lack of entropy ? Does reading from /dev/urandom ever block ?

@javouhey There are many different problems with entropy, but in regards to using /dev/urandom, it is the preferred method in such an example.

/dev/random seeds /dev/urandom, which is then expanded allowing smaller amounts of entropy to result in larger sets of 'random' data. It is definitely recommended to use /dev/urandom and not /dev/random.

@earthgecko Thank you for this script!

Could you help me with an issue I have? When I run it it works like a charm, but when I put it in another script it hangs.

Specifically I am running it a Composer post-install hook to generate a random salt. I suppose it starts a new child process for the command.

In the Activity Monitor I could see the process is reaching nearly 100% CPU usage.

My problem is most probably caused by: symfony/symfony#9409

cat /dev/urandom outputs a large amount of data which fails when the Symfony\Process library starts it as a child process.

Thanks for your script!

I put this into my .bashrc

random-string()
{
    cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w ${1:-32} | head -n 1
}

Use it like this:

$ random-string
FWtnOOHAjbD6rNxWWEeVOCj7JXSEPGJQ

$  random-string 16
CYmYZRlju4h4SN2l

This doesn't work on a Mac:

$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9'
tr: Illegal byte sequence

Nor on FreeBSD 9.2:

$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9'
tr: Illegal byte sequence

Try this: LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 < /dev/urandom | fold -w ${1:-32} | head -n 1+}.

This works on the CLI, but how is this used in the above script? I'm still getting errors within a shell script.

Is there any advantage to using fold + head over just head?

NEW_UUID=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | head -c 32);

@dlangille for mac use:
cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1

What about these symbols

!@#$%^&*()_+?><~`';][

etc.

@wavic

#!/bin/bash

NEW_UUID_MORE_CHARACTERS=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc "a-zA-Z0-9!@#$%^&*()_+?><~\`;'" | fold -w 32 | head -n 1)
echo $NEW_UUID_MORE_CHARACTERS

@mihigh
thanks, works like a charm on the mac! :)

what if i want my string of any particular length only let's just say , in this case , I want it of 10 characters long only ?

@shahaksay94 fold it to 10 instead of 32

Nice. Thanks!

# Without visual similar chars: IOl01
tr -dc 'A-HJ-NP-Za-km-z2-9' < /dev/urandom | dd bs=32 count=1 status=none

+1 @jmack for head -c instead of fold

@dlangille, it works on FreeBSD if you are root.

fewer random bytes could be discarded:

base64 /dev/urandom | tr -d '/+' | dd bs=32 count=1 status=none

or to delete o, O, and 0, for example:

base64 /dev/urandom | tr -d '/+oO0' | dd bs=32 count=1 status=none

or as a function:

mkpasswd() { base64 /dev/urandom | tr -d "/+$2" | dd bs="$1" count=1 status=none | xargs echo; }

used like: mkpasswd 32 'oO0' or mkpasswd 32 '0-9'

👍 @expz

Instead of status=none you can also redirect stderr to /dev/null:

base64 /dev/urandom | tr -d '/+' | dd bs=32 count=1 2>/dev/null

Suggest, if I want Special character in the output of following command.

strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[[:alnum:]]' | head -n 8 | tr -d '\n'; echo;

@jordanmack +1. Stack overflow just rocks for this kind of thing: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101362/how-do-you-generate-passwords

for a full bunch of random chars:

tr -dc [:graph:] < /dev/urandom | head -c 32

If you're going to generate just one password, fine, there's a million ways. But if you're going to generate a million, do you really want to discard 90% of the random bits your computer generates? It seems to me that the passwords will come out as a different kind of 'random'. That's why I suggest a different solution.

on mac

``bash
○ → cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
tr: Illegal byte sequence

@BardiaAfshin

LC_ALL=C; cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1

Soooo....what if I wanted to create a file of generated passwords using this script. Say 1000 of them. I know how to generate multiples, but is it possible to save them to a text file for later use?

Why don't use head -c instead of fold? Benefits: performance, works on Git Bash under Windows too.

cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-z0-9' | head -c 32

https://gist.github.com/fnkr/de448cbf9f45038d69bb

LC_ALL=C; dd if=/dev/urandom bs=256 count=1 2> /dev/null | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | head -c 32; echo

Instead of cating /dev/urandom, just read 256 bytes, which are enough to have a 32 char string.

would be nice if everyone would stop catting all over themselves as the < filename parameter does the same thing.

Here's an example that works on all POSIX systems even Sun unix and AIX and is always going to get 32 characters (ie a DWORD byte read 8 times):

   tr -dc '[:alnum:]' < /dev/urandom  | dd bs=4 count=8 2>/dev/null

@jkwages yes just append the >> my.password.lst_file to the command to pipe into a file or subshell.

What the >> part means is take stdout from the pipe line/command and append to the end of file named my.password.lst_file. Also, the > means overwrite the file with the latest output.

Example:

for idx in `seq 1 1000`; do
    tr -dc '[:alnum:]' < /dev/urandom | dd bs=4 count=8 2>/dev/null >> password.lst
done

An async threaded version would look like this:

for idx in `seq 1 1000`; do
    (tr -dc '[:alnum:]' < /dev/urandom | dd bs=4 count=8 2>/dev/null >>password.lst) & # thread number 1
    (tr -dc '[:alnum:]' < /dev/urandom | dd bs=4 count=8 2>/dev/null >>password.lst) & # thread number 2
done

Perl one-liner in case you only want to have one dependency:

perl -e '@c=("A".."Z","a".."z",0..9);$p.=$c[rand(scalar @c)] for 1..32; print "$p\n"'

Probably not as random as it could be, but should be good enough for this purpose.

FYI:

$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
tr: Illegal byte sequence

This is on ISX Yosemite though

I used the one-liner by @mckyj57, which works great. Thanks!

IMHO here are some simpler options, pick the right tool for the job:

• Inside bash scripts:
  • Random temporary files: mktemp
  • Random number: echo $RANDOM
• Strings, length is players choice, these should be 32 bytes off the top of my head:
  • (lowercase alpha and numbers) openssl rand -hex 16
  • (all alpha, numbers and +/= chars): openssl rand -base64 24

cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 8 | head -n 1

works for me on El Capitan but it triggers "set -e" for some reason and will stop scripts with set -e going; I've run the pieces of this and don't see any nonzero exit codes and am not sure why, but FYI.
Same thing with

env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc '[:alnum:]' < /dev/urandom | dd bs=4 count=2 2>/dev/null

I'm just using $RANDOM now as a workaround but would like a slightly larger space...

1. 400+ out / 5 sec
   $(base64 /dev/urandom | tr -d '/+' | head -c 32 | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
2. 1000 out / 5 sec
   $(head -c 16 /dev/urandom | md5sum | head -c 32)

Made an interactive version.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
###############

echo ""
echo "Welcome to the random alphanumeric sequence generator."
echo 'Random sequence generation taken from: gist.github.com/earthgecko/3089509'
echo ""

echo -n "Enter desired sequence length: "
read input_variable

cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w $input_variable | head -n 1

echo ""
echo "You're welcome."

I don't particularly care for how I used echo to separate text bodies. I feel as if there's a more elegant way to do that.

I'm actually pretty new to coding in general, so if you have any tips, please don't hesitate to give them.

"simple is better then complex"

PASSWORD=`pwgen -s 10 1`

man pwgen - for more details

These two commands generate random passwords and passphrases, respectively. You can use the first command with the right configuration file to generate random alphanumeric strings.

shuf --random-source=/dev/urandom --repeat --head-count=20 file_with_characters | tr --delete '\n'

shuf --random-source=/dev/urandom --repeat --head-count=7 file_with_words | tr '\n' ' '

The password generator requires a file_with_characters containing all the characters you want the password to use, one character per line, and exactly one time each. The file must not contain blank lines, and lines must be newline-terminated.

The passphrase generator requires a file_with_words containing all the words you want the passphrase to use, one word per line, and exactly one time each. The file must not contain blank lines, and lines must be newline-terminated.

The --head-count option specifies the length of the password--in characters--or passphrase--in words.

Very very useful script!!!

But I have still question here:
I usually add the set -euo pipefail in the beginning of shell script. If I use cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | head -c ${len} in the script, bash will raise the pipe error and exit 141. The head retrieves enough the bytes and send SIGPIPE to tr.

Is there any solution to handle this?
Thanks

@fufuwei try not using pipes .e.g.

len=32
head -c 256 /dev/urandom > /tmp/urandom.out
tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' < /tmp/urandom.out > /tmp/urandom.tr
head -c ${len} /tmp/urandom.tr

@earthgecko cool! Thanks

My latest incarnation:

head -c24 < <(tr -dc '\041-\176' < /dev/urandom)

Generates a 24-char string consisting of any printable ASCII character from ! to ~.
Change 24 to whatever length you require, obviously.

Slight update to prevent password containing single quotes, making it easier to quote a variable containing the password.

head -c24 < <(tr --delete --complement '\041-\046\048-\176' < /dev/urandom))

This is what I ended up using in bash on OS X to have filename-safe string
cat /dev/urandom | base64 | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 4 | head -n 1
If you need 16 chars then use
cat /dev/urandom | base64 | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 16 | head -n 1

You get the idea

Thanks

@fhfuwei re: pipefail setting, you can coax it to continue as so;

set -eo pipefail
random="$(LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9-_' < /dev/urandom | head -c12)" || true

without || true at end, it will exit script.

Thanks! 👍

Fantastic work, thanks for sharing!

Strange that this command after 100 iternations only produces a + symbol. What did I do wrong?

cat /dev/urandom | base64 | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9!@#$%^&*()_+?><~\;' | fold -w 16 | head -n 1`

Good job! That's what I need!

To generate WordPress security keys and salts for a wp-config.php file:

# 64 random printable characters
# Excludes: space, double quote, single quote, and backslash
echo $(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc [:print:] | tr -d '[:space:]\042\047\134' | fold -w 64 | head -n 1)
# jVig,+1&z3]}DT*$pvXPY#!z!^A-;[c0n!c*Ju=fy9`+yOauYAve<#fL]?>B9U;/

This will yield results similar to the official generator: https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/

Hi,

How de generate code like this "YH7EF",
with only one time number (nevemind where) or not and letter must differents

Thanks

Within a Docker container

LENGTH="32"

docker run --rm alpine sh -c \
"cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w $LENGTH | head -n 1";

@ManuCart

#!/usr/bin/env bash

string=$(tr -dc '[:upper:]' < /dev/urandom | fold -w 5 | head -n 1)
if ((RANDOM % 2)); then
    sed "s/./$((RANDOM % 10))/$((RANDOM % 5 + 1))" <<< "$string"
else
    echo "$string"
fi

This will generate string with length of 5 characters, sometimes with one number in it sometimes without.

Hi,
My question is, how to allow -= those symbols..

I got it, how to do this

Thanks

For the simple macOS solution (currently Sierra 10.12.5), ShellCheck gives a SC2002 warning about a useless cat. I made a small modification to avoid that:

env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' < /dev/urandom | fold -w 32 | head -n 1

Thank you @mihigh!

How can I create a random password with specific format.
Ex:

1. Length 12
2. Especial caracheres 2 or 3
3. Number 2 or 3
4. Lower 3+
5. Upper 3+

Great, taking all the above:

env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'a-z0-9' < /dev/urandom | head -c24

Many Thanks!

Thanks! Exactly what i was searching for

👍

Just to throw my 2 cents: dd if=/dev/urandom bs=20 count=1 2>/dev/null | openssl sha1

@x3ak, that is the best!!!

I like

openssl rand -base64 100

or

openssl rand -hex 100

EDIT: Just noticed u2mejc posted the same earlier.

I use

openssl rand -base64 500 | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 128 | head -n 1

which generates a 128-character alphanumeric string.

Thanks!

A shorter version to generate a random number in hexadecimal format:

$ xxd -l16 -ps /dev/urandom
330c1515e66d01c0d695826027b513b1

Adjust the length (-l) to your liking.

1+ to @u2mejc and @lukas2 solution. This works even on very restrictive jailedshells where simple commands like tr are not available.

just use uuid:

cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid
478b2f19-dea3-4e53-a2b1-0c6cdb5b8b29

👍 To @oppianmatt for the nice simple answer. Bash function for convenience:

function random-string {
    UUID=$(cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid)
    LENGTH=${1:-36}
    echo ${UUID:0:$LENGTH}
}

Output examples:

$ random-string
91f489ea-4c5a-4a14-ab89-bd028f36b242
$ random-string 8
bcbdbd1a

This is useful. How do I create multiple lines of random characters of fixed length and store it to a file? I am doing it this way and it prints all my 5 lines onto a single line.
for i in $(seq 1 5); do < /dev/urandom LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc "ATGC" | head -c 9 > file.txt; done

Depending on the usecase, this might be sufficient and easy enough to write adhoc without adding another utility to your memory
date +%s|md5 - not cryprographically secure but enough to make unique filenames.

Another one in similar vein that ensures you won't get the same ID if you run in quick succession:
echo "$(history)$(date +%s)"|shasum|head -c $CHARS

tr: Illegal byte sequence

Solution:

env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc "A-Za-z0-9_!@#\$%^&*()-+=" < /dev/urandom | head -c 32 | xargs

A small error: you wrote that this generates lower case:
cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
It generates mixed case... to generate only lower case you should do:
cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1

I just had to generate some CSV with multiple random strings in single line. Total number of lines was 1,000,000,000. Bash wasn't able to serve me well. I even made it running in parallel on 30vcpu aws machine, but the IO was not saturated enough it was writing about 15-300MB/s. I had to implement generator in Java which was able to reach about 150mb/s, but I hit some other limitation from JVM perspective Random generator. It was the slowest part. But I was lucky and found this superfast random generator:
http://dsiutils.di.unimi.it/docs/it/unimi/dsi/util/XorShift1024StarPhiRandom.html

Which helped me to saturate IO around ~400-500MB/s write, so my 500GB sample generated file took around 20-30minutes...

Still, thanks for this gist. I just post where it finally led me after reaching some limits of unix tools

Creates 10 passwords (15 char length) containing at least one character from each group: lower , upper case, digit.
LC_ALL=C tr -dc 'A-Za-z0-9' < /dev/urandom |fold -w 15|grep [[:upper:]]|grep [[:lower:]]|grep [[:digit:]]|head -n 10

base64 -w can do the job of fold -w too:

base64 -w 32 /dev/urandom | tr -d /+ | head -n 1

Thanks!

@alahijani

base64 -w 32 /dev/urandom | tr -d /+ | head -n 1

OSX: base64: invalid option -- w

hangs when run

I just made a simple function out of it. Also a small helper function to check for pwned passwords:

#/bin/bash

generatePassword() {
	local cCharacters
	cCharacters=${1:-32}
	local s=""
	
	# Here we produce 28 characters each time
	until s="$s$(dd bs=21 count=1 if=/dev/urandom 2>/dev/null | LC_CTYPE=C tr -cd "a-z0-9\-_#+")"
		  ((${#s} >= cCharacters)); do :; done
	
	echo "${s:0:$cCharacters}"
}

generatePassword 12
generatePassword
generatePassword 100

pwnedCheck() {
	local pwd="$1"
	local hash
	hash=$(echo -n "$pwd" | sha1sum | cut -c -40)
	local expected=${hash#?????}
	local prefix=${hash%$expected}
	local match

	match="$(curl -s "https://api.pwnedpasswords.com/range/${prefix}" | grep -i "^$expected:")" || return 1 
	echo "${match#*:}" | tr -d '\r'
}

occ="$(pwnedCheck "1234")"
echo "The password '1234' has $occ occurences."

genPass="$(generatePassword)"
occ="$(pwnedCheck "$genPass")"
if [[ -z "$occ" ]]; then
	echo "The password '$genPass' has no occurences."
else
	echo "The password '$genPass' has $occ occurences."
fi

See also

Eliminate cat:

random32=$(tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' < /dev/urandom | fold -w 32 | head -n 1)

awesome
should build a package for pip :)

tr: Illegal byte sequence

If anyone is getting the following from macOS:

cat /dev/urandom | env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
> Input error

Try this instead:

cat /dev/urandom | env LC_ALL=C tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
> 3vIjVCiFzuhO4muqaddNf1d6PCFO814W

Why don't use head -c instead of fold? Benefits: performance, works on Git Bash under Windows too.

cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-z0-9' | head -c 32

https://gist.github.com/fnkr/de448cbf9f45038d69bb

As @fnkr said, using head -c gives you a better performance. But I'd sugest using head when reading /dev/urandom since cat may cause an out of memory issue. Like this:

test=$(head -c 4096 /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 4096 | head -n 1)

In this specific case I had to generate a random string with 4096 bytes programmatically. Using cat /dev/urandom was making my application hang since this file is a bit too large.

@Tagima using head instead of cat on /dev/urandom does not give the same results. You probably want to check all of your output is 4096 bytes as head will not necessarily generate the exact size in all innovacations or use head -c 6096 /dev/urandom as you fold at 4096, 6096 will ensure you have sufficient.

me@host:~$ head -c 32 /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
1WiaY4pBbvme@host:~$
me@host:~$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
SldlezjjelFEKScjS9SFEbdWoQeptU95
me@host:~$
me@host:~$ head -c 32 /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
oHMLHwUme@host:~$ head -c 32 /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
qdNQZtFGme@host:~$ head -c 32 /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
AtBByXkB7CKme@host:~$ head -c 32 /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
p12kCWu77me@host:~$ head -c 32 /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
9owjuxHme@host:~$ head -c 32 /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
j9yEZeDime@host:~$

me@host:~$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
WJIRqP4qYnJWHAKu8aIM9kj5K9oIxHp3
me@host:~$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
hUMa4Nc1y7DgZmb3uDKTivv1OvQTHWIL
me@host:~$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
JDwO1jdz8Vsrl4tH5xx4OmsLwhhViQ3X
me@host:~$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
ssA2D7hj1cXRxVwFHHHa6AUqGk7NL1k7
me@host:~$ cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1
YReUN6A7GEG6f69Jz4VuFpfPVIZiISFt
me@host:~$

@earthgecko Thank you!

When I try to use it the command just doesn't exit. I assume it is because there is no EOF for cat to exit?

use cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-za-z0-9' | fold -w 8 | head -n 1 for lowercase generator

Thanks

Very nice and useful.

This is a good script, but what about the random from 0.001 to 1?

@icohigh - random float between 0 and 1 (to random precise between 1 and 3)
It is not pure bash, but this gist was not about random floats it was about random alphanumeric strings.

python -c "exec(\"import random\nprint(round(random.uniform(0, 1), int(random.uniform(1, 4))))\")"

If you did not want random precise, e.g. 0.111, 0.123, 0.7, 0.356

python -c "exec(\"import random\nprint(round(random.uniform(0, 1), 3))\")"

Exactly what I need ;)

Also a much more sketchy but works way

head -c 1024 /dev/urandom | base64 | tr -cd "[:upper:][:digit:]" | head -c 32

tested on macOS 10.15.7
it does not promise a success, but after generating 1024 chars on random, the chance of it not containing 32 upper case and number is astronomically slim.

If you are curious, the chance of not generating 512 char and only have <32 upper&digit is 2.051*10^-195. and the chance of failing of 1024 is ....... ok, mathmetica literately tells me it "is too small to represent as a normalized machine number" 😆 and it is about 10^-400

and btw it takes 7ms to execute; on my machine 🤣

Which one of all the different options given above is the fastest?
As an example - if one wants to generate 10000 lines each 16 random chars long using 0-9a-zA-Z as a dictionary, which method would be the fastest?