Question

I am writing a small password generator and have 4 CheckBoxes for the combinations, these are: Upper Case Letters, Lower Case Letters, Numbers and Special Characters.

My question is – do I have to go through each possible combination of CheckBoxes in the logic with “if” statements or is there a quicker, more simple way that could shorten the code more?

I am sorry if this question is rather silly, but it will really help me in the future to learn from this if indeed there is a better way.

All the best

Chris ( shamballa ).

Answer 1

Why do you think which you must through each possible combination of CheckBoxes?

check this basic function.

Suppose do you have 4 checkboxes called CbUpper, CbLower, CbNumbers, CbSymbols.

Now you can construct a function like this

function Generate(AllowUpper,AllowLower,AllowNumbers,AllowSymbols:Boolean; PassLen:Integer):AnsiString;
const
  UpperList  = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ';
  LowerList  = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
  NumberList = '0123456789';
  SymbolList = '@#()=¿?!¡[]';
var
  MyList  : AnsiString;
  Index   : Integer;
  i       : Integer;
begin
  Result:='';
  MyList:='';
   //here if the flag is set the elements are added to the main array (string) to process
   if AllowUpper   then MyList:=MyList + UpperList;
   if AllowLower   then MyList:=MyList + LowerList;
   if AllowNumbers then MyList:=MyList + NumberList;
   if AllowSymbols then MyList:=MyList + SymbolList;

   Randomize;
   if Length(MyList)>0 then
     for i:= 1 to PassLen do
     begin
      Index:=Random(Length(MyList))+1;
      Result:=Result+MyList[Index];
     end;
end;

and call in this way

Var
  MyPassword : AnsiString;
begin
   MyPassword:=Generate(CbUpper.Checked,CbLower.Checked,CbNumbers.Checked,CbSymbols.Checked,20);