Password generator

Hi people, I have to make a password generator, but i have a little problem. - It needs to generate password 8 characters long, and including 1 or 2 special characters(like #$%&*@). - Those special characters can never appear as the first or last character in the string... anywhere between is fine. I have a password generator script now that does the first thing... but the special character can be in front or back of the string wich it shouldnt.. i have been looking on the web for this but i havent found the answer. Below is my scripts so far.. Any help is appreciated, thanks for your time, Best regards, Davy Obdam ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <?php // A function to generate random alphanumeric passwords in PHP // It expects to be passed a desired password length, but it // none is passed the default is set to 8 (you can change this) function generate_password($length = 8) { // This variable contains the list of allowable characters // for the password. Note that the number 0 and the letter // 'O' have been removed to avoid confusion between the two. // The same is true of 'I' and 1 $allowable_characters = "abcdefghefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789%#*&"; // We see how many characters are in the allowable list $ps_len = strlen($allowable_characters); // Seed the random number generator with the microtime stamp // (current UNIX timestamp, but in microseconds) mt_srand((double)microtime()*1000000); // Declare the password as a blank string. $pass = ""; // Loop the number of times specified by $length for($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {

       // Each iteration, pick a random character from the
       // allowable string and append it to the password.
       $pass .= $allowable_characters[mt_rand(0,$ps_len-1)];
     }

// Retun the password we've selected return $pass; } $password = generate_password(); echo $password; ?> -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Davy Obdam Web application developer Networking4all email: d.obdam@networking4all.com email: info@davyobdam.com internet: http://www.networking4all.com -----------------------------------------------------------------------