Shell Programming and Scripting

Thanks, I'll test this code

Hello, I am quite new to linux and was wondering what this line of code did?

Thank you very much!

password= Assignment to a shell variable
$() call to a subprocess
perl -e call the perl binary to execute code from command line, instead of file source code
'print crypt($ARGV[0], "password")' display the result of calling the perl function crypt
crypt($ARGV[0], "password") crypt will return a digest of whatever was given as argument. $ARGV[0] is the first argument from the command line, in this case the last $password term. "password" is what's called SALT string. It can be anything. Not to confuse with $password
$password Argument given at the command line, in the form of perl variable, to crypt (presumably a string that represents a clear text password)

Best way of learn is to try:
Change password and random_text to anything you want

Code:

perl -e 'print crypt("password", "random_text")'

Another solution is to use openssl to generate encrypted passwords (it automatically chooses salt values for you, but you could duplicate what the perl code was doing by usint the -salt pa option

Code:

password=$(openssl passwd "$password")

Code:

password=$(openssl passwd -salt pa "$password")

Notice how the $password variable is quoted above, this is to protect against white space in the password.