In order to create a password on a certain web site, one of the requirements is to use least eight non-ascii control characters. I should know this, and I have a hunch it's very obvious, but can someone answer? I used what I thought would qualify, but maybe I didn't use enough.
Which is it
non-control ASCII characters as in your title or
non-ASCII control characters as in your text? I suspect your title is correct in which case any upper or lower alphanumeric character or symbol should work. Other than resorting to hexadecimal or binary code I can't figure out how one would go about entering non-ASCII control characters. In any case you can find the ASCII character set
here which contains a list of the ASCII control characters, the printable ASCII characters, and the extended ASCII character set.
Sorry. I'll cut and paste:
"Password requires 8-20 non-control ascii characters"
The shorter answer is there are 32 'control characters' prior to the 'printable' 96 in the low-bit ascii range 0-127. Many of the control chars are used for special keys such as arrows, return, and escape. It's pretty rare to find any password system that will accept non-printable characters.
I you want to get exotic with your password characters, you can go with the symbols, tho the ones that are NOT above the numbers are actually the less-used and may be slightly more secure.
ASCII characters are letters, numbers, and standard punctuation marks that do not have accent marks or non-English characters. Every character in this post, for example, is a non-control ASCII character.
"Non-control ASCII characters" is brain-dead computer-programmer-speak for "numbers, English letters, and standard punctuation." Whatever user interface designer wrote that message needs to be fired.