[pass] Provide symbol set as command line argument

[Brian Candler]

On 11/11/2016 11:01, Lenz Weber wrote:
> * If yes, how should it do so?
>     * Should it be a command switch,
>     * should it be passed as a CHARSET environment varianble (my 
> preference)?

or:

* Should it be configurable to use an external password generator (my 
preference)?

 > Base64 may sometimes be sufficient and sometimes just not satisfy 
restrictions imposed by the website

But CHARSET by itself doesn't solve that problem either. CHARSET says 
which characters *may* be in the password, but it won't always generate 
an acceptable password if the site has additional constraints, e.g.

- minimum of 1 number
- minimum of 1 lower-case character
- minimum of 1 upper-case character
- minimum of 1 symbol
- no more than two consecutive characters the same
- no dictionary words
... etc ad infinitum

(Aside: of course, all those requirements are provably *stupid* when you 
are generating a truly random password. They reduce the number of valid 
combinations that a given N-character password has, and therefore make 
the password easier to brute-force)

But I'm not arguing that base64 should be the only approach supported by 
pass (although I would argue it's a strong and reasonable default and 
works well for the majority of sites). Rather, I argue that if someone 
wants to do something other than pass' default, whatever that default 
is, they should be able to launch an external password generator tool.  
That will satisfy everyone, regardless of their password preferences.

Regards,

Brian.