title: What do you call the different types of characters of a password when it is being validated?
body: <p>I hope this question is not too pedantic, but is there a technical term for the different "categories" that are part of a password when it is being validated? <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCAQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Ftechnet.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Flibrary%2Fcc786468(v%3Dws.10).aspx&amp;ei=VstPVKOALrDgsAT3toKgDQ&amp;usg=AFQjCNGMqgtvbjsJlrhxDFmSOr-pP9kPNQ&amp;sig2=rZ8Z2Q2rmGgVNo6ULbMlhA&amp;bvm=bv.77880786,d.cWc" rel="nofollow">For example</a> default AD password complexity requirements that must be met (Microsoft calls them "<strong>categories</strong>"):</p>
  
  <pre><code>Passwords must contain characters from three of the following five **categories**: 
  
  Uppercase characters of European languages (A through Z, with diacritic marks, Greek and Cyrillic characters)
  
  Lowercase characters of European languages (a through z, sharp-s, with diacritic marks, Greek and Cyrillic characters)
  
  Base 10 digits (0 through 9)
  
  Nonalphanumeric characters: ~!@#$%^&amp;*_-+=`|\(){}[]:;"'&lt;&gt;,.?/
  
  Any Unicode character that is categorized as an alphabetic character but is not uppercase or lowercase. This includes Unicode characters from Asian languages.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there a term used by security engineers or cryptographers to refer these "categories"?</p>