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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-29T08:24:47+00:00

I would like to be able to generate all possible strings from a given

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I would like to be able to generate all possible strings from a given length, and I frankly don’t know how to code that. So for further explanation, I and a friend would like to demonstrate some basic hacking techniques, so bruteforcing comes up. Of course, he will be my victim, no illegal thing there.

However, the only thing he told me is that his PW will be 4-char-long, but I’m pretty sure his PW won’t be in any dictionnary, that would be toi easy.

So I came up with the idea of generating EVERY 4-char-long-string possible, containing a-z characters (no caps).

Would someone have a lead to follow to code such an algorithm ? I don’t really bother with performances, if it takes 1 night to generate all PW, that’s no problem.

Don’t forget, that’s only on demonstration purposes.

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  1. Editorial Team

    You can do it just how you’d do it with numbers. Start with aaaa. Then increment the ‘least significant’ part, so aaab. Keep going until you get to aaaz. Then increment to aaba. Repeat until you get to zzzz.

    So all you need to do is implement is 

    String getNext(String current)

    To expand on this; It possibly isnt the quickest way of doing things, but it is the simplest to get right.

    As the old adage goes – ‘first make it right, then make it fast’. Getting a working implementation that passes all your tests (you do have tests, right?) is what you do first. You then rewrite it to make it fast, using your tests as reassurance you’re not breaking the core functionality.

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