Check password quality with Perl

When you manage some serious system where users can change their passwords you’ll face with problem of quality of those passwords. There is a Perl module – Data::Password, which may do all work to check user passwords: length or the number of character groups. Also, it’s possible to make more complicated checking: the password does not contain the same chars repeatedly or ascending or descending characters, or charcters close to each other in the keyboard. You can use system dictionary files (/usr/share/dict/words for Fedora Core 5, for example) or create you own. The module has only two methods and six variable which can be imported into your script/module to customize checking. Here is a small example of using Data::Password:
use Data::Password qw(:all);
$DICTIONARY = 0;
$GROUPS = 0;
# Will print "Bad password - contains the word 'clear', only lowercase"
print IsBadPassword("clearant");

Mosaic images and video with Perl

Perl is cool and geek! You can do many thing using it and not just simple scripts. You have to just know how to do it. Tomorrow I found two articles on 128.ibm.com: “Create mosaic images with Perl and ImageMagick” and “Create mosaic movies with Perl, ImageMagick, and MPlayer“. Source code is available for both articles.

Perl with taste of Strawberry

Perl developers who work under Windows didn’t have possibility to install XS CPAN modules directly from CPAN. I used a command nmake from MS Visual Studio to do it. The project Strawberry Perl which is a part of Vanilla Perl Project changed this situation:

The purpose of the Strawberry Perl series is to provide a practical Win32 Perl environment for experienced Perl developers to experiment with and test the installation of various CPAN modules under Win32 conditions, and to provide a useful platform for doing real work.

In my mind Strawberry Perl appreciably lightens the life of Perl developers under Windows who don’t want to move to Linux.