Tech-Recipes - Latest Comments in Hide password entry in Bourne/bash shell script

Re: Hide password entry in Bourne/bash shell script

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 03:51:27 -0000

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.

Re: Hide password entry in Bourne/bash shell script

qmchenry — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 03:48:52 -0000

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..

Re: Hide password entry in Bourne/bash shell script

sttyecho — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 03:43:39 -0000

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

Re: Hide password entry in Bourne/bash shell script

qmchenry — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 06:44:49 -0000

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!

Re: Hide password entry in Bourne/bash shell script

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 02:30:43 -0000

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

read -s secret