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Broadsworde avatar Ubuntu

How to see the complete 'special symbol set' that apg (Automated Password Generator) is using

jp flag
Broadsworde

I am using apg to generate password suggestions, and am using the -M switch to include special keyboard characters:

apg -a 1 -n 1 -m 16 -x 16 -M SNCL
where:
-a, algorithm - 0 default pronounceable, 1 random unpronounceable
-n, number of passwords
-m, minimum length
-x, maximum length
-M, mode - S, Special symbol set, N, Numeral symbol set, C, upper Case symbol set, L, Lower case symbol set

A lot of online services are picky about which special characters can be used, so I want to be able to exclude the ones that are most often not allowed. But in order to do this I need to know what characters apg is using as it's 'special symbol set'. Is there a way of extracting this data from somewhere? Ideally the actual characters not a description if possible, e.g. '%' not 'Percent'

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hr flag
steeldriver

So far as I can tell, the only way is to refer to the source. The characters for all sets appear to be contained in a single statically initialized array of struct sym:

struct sym smbl[94] = 
{
 {'a', S_SL}, {'b', S_SL}, {'c', S_SL}, {'d', S_SL}, {'e', S_SL}, {'f', S_SL},
 {'g', S_SL}, {'h', S_SL}, {'i', S_SL}, {'j', S_SL}, {'k', S_SL}, {'l', S_SL},
 {'m', S_SL}, {'n', S_SL}, {'o', S_SL}, {'p', S_SL}, {'q', S_SL}, {'r', S_SL},
 {'s', S_SL}, {'t', S_SL}, {'u', S_SL}, {'v', S_SL}, {'w', S_SL}, {'x', S_SL},
 {'y', S_SL}, {'z', S_SL}, {'A', S_CL}, {'B', S_CL}, {'C', S_CL}, {'D', S_CL},
 {'E', S_CL}, {'F', S_CL}, {'G', S_CL}, {'H', S_CL}, {'I', S_CL}, {'J', S_CL},
 {'K', S_CL}, {'L', S_CL}, {'M', S_CL}, {'N', S_CL}, {'O', S_CL}, {'P', S_CL},
 {'Q', S_CL}, {'R', S_CL}, {'S', S_CL}, {'T', S_CL}, {'U', S_CL}, {'V', S_CL},
 {'W', S_CL}, {'X', S_CL}, {'Y', S_CL}, {'Z', S_CL}, {'1', S_NB}, {'2', S_NB},
 {'3', S_NB}, {'4', S_NB}, {'5', S_NB}, {'6', S_NB}, {'7', S_NB}, {'8', S_NB},
 {'9', S_NB}, {'0', S_NB}, {33 , S_SS}, {34 , S_SS}, {35 , S_SS}, {36 , S_SS},
 {37 , S_SS}, {38 , S_SS}, {39 , S_SS}, {40 , S_SS}, {41 , S_SS}, {42 , S_SS},
 {43 , S_SS}, {44 , S_SS}, {45 , S_SS}, {46 , S_SS}, {47 , S_SS}, {58 , S_SS},
 {59 , S_SS}, {60 , S_SS}, {61 , S_SS}, {62 , S_SS}, {63 , S_SS}, {64 , S_SS},
 {91 , S_SS}, {92 , S_SS}, {93 , S_SS}, {94 , S_SS}, {95 , S_SS}, {96 , S_SS},
 {123, S_SS}, {124, S_SS}, {125, S_SS}, {126, S_SS}
};

where

#define S_NB    0x01 /* Numeric */
#define S_SS    0x02 /* Special */
#define S_CL    0x04 /* Capital */
#define S_SL    0x08 /* Small   */
#define S_RS    0x10 /* Restricted Symbol*/

struct sym
 {
  char   ch;
  USHORT type;
 };

So you can write a little bit of C to iterate over the array and print the ch value if the type is equal to S_SS, which gives the following:

! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~
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Broadsworde avatar
jp flag
Broadsworde
Thank you kindly, I wasn't expecting that kind of awesome response! Appreciated.
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hr flag
steeldriver
@Broadsworde you're welcome - btw, since (according to `apt show apg`) *"apg has not seen upstream attention since 2003"* you might want to look at more actively maintained alternatives like the Perl [String::Random](https://metacpan.org/pod/String::Random) module as well
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