[Tutor] Simple password generation

[Trey Beck]

Hi. First post.

I'm trying to (more or less) copy the functionality of quepasa  
(http://quepasa.sourceforge.net), a simple password generation script  
that builds passwords from a combination of a passphrase and another  
string (like a domain name).

If you enter the same passphrase and string, you should get the same  
password (in case you forget...).

I've added a bit so that if neither a passphrase nor a string is  
entered, the function returns a random (or somewhat random) eight- 
character string.

Am i on the right track here? (I'm brand new to sha and so forth.)  
Criticisms?

Thx!
Trey

---


import sha, re, base64, string
from random import choice

def QuePasa (salt='', passphrase='', length=8):
     salted = passphrase + salt
     newpasswd = ''

     if (salted):
         hash = sha.new(salted).digest()
         # for now, strip non-alphanumeric characters
         newpasswd = re.sub(r'\W', '', base64.encodestring(hash)) 
[:length]
     else:
         chars = string.letters + string.digits
         for i in range(length):
             newpasswd = newpasswd + choice(chars)

     return newpasswd

if __name__ == "__main__":
     sites = ['thissite.com','thatsite.com', 'theothersite.com','']
     passphrase = 'all your base are belong to us'

     for i in range(10):
         for site in sites:
             print "%s : %s" % (site, QuePasa(passphrase, site))