5 comments

• 

  Anonymous

  4 years ago

  instead you can use -s option with read to hide the value like password
  
  read -s secret
  reply
• 

  qmchenry

  4 years ago

  Neat trick! Beware that this is OS dependent. It works on all the Linux flavors I've tried but not a Solaris 8 system. If you are writing a script to run on many platforms, the old school method above may be more generic. But if writing a script for a specific system, this is a much slicker method. Thanks for sharing!
  reply
• 

  sttyecho

  3 years ago

  I also add the protection for the interruptions:
  
  trap "stty echo ; exit" 1 2 15
  stty -echo
  read password
  stty echo
  trap "" 1 2 15
  
  If the user press Ctrl+C in the password prompt, the normal stty mode will be restored
  reply
• 

  qmchenry

  3 years ago

  Awesome! I've never used trap before, but I'll be using it from now on. That's a great solution to a very annoying problem. Thanks for sharing! Use of the trap command would make a great recipe..
  
  Q
  reply
• 

  Anonymous

  3 years ago

  One more thing (OS and shell-dependent):
  use closing redirection in the stty command:
  stty -echo >&- 2>&-
  
  This helps to avoid obsolete "No terminal" message in the scripts.
  reply