ORA-00988: missing or invalid password(s)

Question

I'm trying to change an oracle password:

alter user FOO identified by 'BAR';

and I'm getting the following back:

Error starting at line 120 in command:
alter user FOO identified by 'BAR'
Error report:
SQL Error: ORA-00988: missing or invalid password(s)
00988. 00000 -  "missing or invalid password(s)"

What's going on?

Answer 1

Turns out one doesn't put the password in single quotes. Double quotes are required if the password contains some special characters.

alter user FOO identified by 'BAR'; -- Broken
alter user FOO identified by BAR;   -- Works
alter user FOO identified by "BAR"; -- Works

Answer 2

alter user davidl identified by "newpassword" replace "oldpassword";