Generate Random String with CLI

TIL a few one-liners to generate random strings.

date +%s | sha512sum | base64 | head -c 24 ; echo

The string is pseudo random and seeded by the current UNIX timestamp. The command should with most Linux distros and MacOS. If running on Linux a more random command uses /dev/urandom and tr.

tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 </dev/urandom | head -c 24; echo

If you need a passphrase you can use the dictionary file to select n random words.

grep "^[[:alpha:]]\{5,8\}$" "/usr/share/dict/words" | sort -R | head -4