25 March 2005 37 comments Linux
This has taken me some time to figure out because I couldn't find anything on Google. I think the problem was that I didn't know what to look for.
If you have a bash script that asks the user to enter their username and password you use the read function in sh
. But when you read in the password you don't want it to show on the screen what you're writing. Someone could be leaning over your shoulder. Python has a similar standard library module called getpass which works like this:
>>> from getpass import getpass
>>> p = getpass("Password please: ")
Password please:
>>> print "Your password is", len(p), "characters long"
Your password is 5 characters long
That's fine if you do this via Python; but I needed to do it in one of my bash scripts. Here's how to do it:
#!/bin/bash
read -p "Username: " uname
stty -echo
read -p "Password: " passw; echo
stty echo
Now, hopefully this will help other people who get stuck with the same problem.
Thanks, this is very useful! Needed this exact functionality for a script I was writing.
Nice, needed the python way of doing this.
thanks
Thanks! I needed a quick way to do this in bash and your code works like a charm.
helpful indeed
Very helpfull, needed the bash example
Works gr8! Thnx!
realy usefull. thanks
Nice, first hit on google for "bash read password" and exactly what i need :D
Easier solution:
read -s -p "Password: " passwd
see also: the description for builtin commands in the bash man page (man bash or info bash)
also interesting is read -e ... to gain readline support for editing the input line
thx !
thanks for the tips!
Perfect. I struggled for an hour before I found your method.
awesome, just what i was looking for! and reading michael's comment from oct 26th showed me an even more elegant solution. thanks a lot!
THANKS!!!!
Exactly what im looking for.
Greetz from germany,
Martin
This page shows first hit in Google when searching:
reading password python
First page for "python read password" too. Thanks!
Thanks!
Brilliant! Thanks very much
Note that you actually don't need to handle the terminal options with stty yourself -- the bash read builtin has an option that will do it for you [-s]. See http://www.ss64.com/bash/read.html for the other options for the read builtin.
The following example should be functionally equivalent to yours:
#!/bin/bash
read -p "Username: " uname
read -s -p "Password: " passw
Definitely a cleaner solution. Had I only known!
Before doing a "stty -echo" or a "read -s", you should set trapping like so:
trap "stty echo; exit" INT TERM EXIT
Otherwise the script can exit in a state where the user can't see there keystrokes and then they get confused.
@Joshua Randall, @Richard Bronosky Thanks a mill. Exactly what I was looking for.
Excuse me. Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.
I am from Arabia and also now am reading in English, give please true I wrote the following sentence: "This court was based generally that breeches could smuggle again of the speaker, whom they said based as an character or song of the settlement."
Thank you very much :-(. Lanai.
I constantly am getting this error:
read -s -p "Password: " passw
read: 4: illegal option -s
does anyone know why I can't get -s to work?
Hi Matt!
In a script, start with
#!/bin/bash
instead of
#!/bin/sh
Nice! Thanks.
Just what I was looking for.
Thanks so much.
Just perfect. Thank you so much!
thanks buddy........
You may also use this command :
read -s -p "Password: " mypassword
src : http://bash.cyberciti.biz/misc-shell/shel-to-accept-password/
Thank You! I was looking for a bash version.
Thanks !
hi..I just wrote this in my .bashrc to improve security.
alias gcal='stty -echo; read -p "password: " password && stty echo && gcalcli --user foo@gmail.com --pw $password'
Beautiful
Simple & works
how about if the password has special characters?
Please change " it's content is outdated" to "its content is outdated"
Thank you!