Question

I want to create a function that compares a password against some commonly idiotic ones, so that the user can’t pick one of these, but the function I have written so far, when put between script tags, causes no javascript to be recognized (by Firebug). I assume the array creation is at fault.

function unacceptable(pwd){
    var unforgivable = [
    /password/gi, /*g matches any occurance of sequence, i checks case insensitive*/
    /12345678/g,
    /8675309/g,
    /[a-z]{8,}/gi,
    /qwerty/gi,
    /asdfg/gi,
    /qazwsx/gi,
    /zxcvb/gi,
    /letmein/gi,
    /trustno1/gi,
    /omnicloud/gi,
    /monkey/gi];
    for (var i=0; i<unforgivable.length; i++)
        if(pwd.match(unforgivable[i])) return true;
    return false;
} 

Answer 1

You don’t need the loop to test every word as you can put them all into one regular expression (separated by the | character) and let the regex engine look for any of them all at once. You could do that like this:

function unacceptable(pwd){
    var unforgivable = [
        "password",
        "12345678",
        "8675309",
        "[a-z]{8,}",
        "qwerty",
        "asdfg",
        "qazwsx",
        "zxcvb",
        "letmein",
        "trustno1",
        "omnicloud",
        "monkey"
    ];
    var re = new RegExp(unforgivable.join("|"), "i");
    return re.test(pwd);
}

Working demo here: http://jsfiddle.net/jfriend00/cyVbC/

P.S. You don’t have to put all the words into an array. You could just predeclare the entire regex, but I thought putting them in the array like this made for more readable code that was easier to maintain.

It could also be this:

var unforgivable = /password|12345678|8675309|[a-z]{8,}|qwerty|asdfg|qazwsx|zxcvb|letmein|trustno1|omnicloud|monkey/i;

function unacceptable(pwd){
    return unforgivable.test(pwd);
}