Josh Erickson

Recently I was needing to create a bunch of random passwords for users and I needed to have it work in Powershell.

Since Lee Holmes’ comments, I’ve updated the file and function with some of the suggestions he gave. Unfortunately, the <# #> help syntax throws a bunch of errors in V1, so I had to revert to my old ways.

@'
<#
.Synopsis
	Create a random string of letters.
.Description
	Create a random string of letters (upper and lower) and numbers for
	use in passwords.
.Parameter Length
	How long do you want the password to be? (Default is 8.)
.Example
	PS> createPassword 10

.ReturnValue
	[string]
.Link

.Notes
NAME:      Verb-Noun
AUTHOR:    Josh Erickson
LASTEDIT:  1/21/2009
#Requires -Version 2.0
#>
'@ | out-null

function createPassword {
	param(
		[int] $length = 8
	);

	if($length -eq $Null) {
		$length = 8;
	}

	$tmppwd = @();
	$rand = new-object system.random -argumentlist $(date).tick;

	for($i = 0; $i -lt $length; $i++) {
		#caps 65, 90
		$a = $rand.next(0,100);
		if($a -lt 33) {
			$tmppwd += ,[char]$rand.next(97,122);
		} elseif($a -ge 34 -and $a -lt 66) {
			$tmppwd += ,[char]$rand.next(65,90);
		} else {
			$tmppwd += ,[char]$rand.next(48,57);
		}
	}

	[string]::join("",$tmppwd);
}