Over the years I've written the same code over and over to create a random salt string of 2 characters. Worse, the Modular Crypt Format is difficult to find documentation on, so creating stronger hashed passwords is difficult to get right. By this, I mean things like: crypt.crypt('password', 'xJ') crypt.crypt('password', '$1$/gL8bA.z') crypt.crypt('password', '$6$/uPNNoSGrlc0Kf0go') To that end, I'm proposing the addition of a "mksalt()" method which will generate a salt, and several METHOD_* values to select which hashing method to use. I also figure there will need to be a "methods()" call that figures out what methods are available in the library crypt() and return a list of the available ones. If we have a way to generate a salt, then I figure we could drop the salt argument of crypt.crypt(), and if not specified to generate one. So to hash a password you could do: "crypt.crypt('password')". I figure that the best way to accomplish this is to implement this all in Python and move the existing C crypt module to _crypt. I've created an issue: http://bugs.python.org/issue10924 with this description and a patch to accomplish the above. Thoughts and review? Thanks, Sean -- I have a large collection of sea shells, which I keep scattered on beaches around the world. Maybe you've seen it... -- Steven Wright Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo@tummy.com> tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability