🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov6.202148.1587@cs.sandia.gov> wllarso@sandia.gov (William L Larson) writes:
: How long does it take to proactivly check passwords using npasswd,
: passwd+, or Larry Wall's passwd Perl script.  I would very much
: like to use this type of program, but I know I have very impatient
: users out there that will not stand for long waits.  Are we talking
: seconds or minutes for these programs to run using an "acceptable"
: password?

The overhead of the Perl passwd program is one to four seconds on a
Sparc 1, depending on such vagaries as whether the proposed password is
all alphanumeric or is longer than 8 characters.  (Of course, it's even
faster for the really obvious passwords like "qwerty" and "abcddcba"...  :-)

Most of that overhead is in looking for two-word combinations, by the
way.  That could be sped up at the expense of some disk space, but it
didn't seem worthwhile at the time.  Generally, by the time they've
read the comment "(Checking for lousy passwords...)" it has already
finished checking and issued the doleful news.

Larry Wall
lwall@netlabs.com