Comments on: Hide password entry in Bourne/bash shell script

By:

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 08:51:27 +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.

By: qmchenry

qmchenry — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 08:48:52 +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..

By: sttyecho

sttyecho — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 08:43:39 +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

By: qmchenry

qmchenry — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:44:49 +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!

By:

Wed, 27 Oct 2004 06:30:43 +0000

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

read -s secret