gitarwmn has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello, I'm a newbie and have a simple question about passwords. My thought is to ask the user for their password to use later on in the script (getting the pw via STDIN) but I was wondering how to keep the password from being seen? Anyone have any suggestions. By the way, I'm using this on a Win32 script. Thanks

20031115 Edit by BazB: Changed title from 'simple password question'

  • Comment on Reading password from STDIN without echoing

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Re: Reading password from STDIN without echoing
by AcidHawk (Vicar) on Nov 14, 2003 at 18:59 UTC

    Please NOTE! this is a NOT recommended method of hiding passwords, but to answer your question, keep the password from being seen?

    Look at Term::ReadKey 

    #! /use/bin/perl
use strict;
use Term::ReadKey;

ReadMode( "noecho");
print "Enter pwd please :";
chomp (my $pwd = <>);
ReadMode ("original") ;
print "\nYou typed $pwd!\n";

    [download]

    Update: This has been tested on a Win32 platform.

    -----
    Of all the things I've lost in my life, its my mind I miss the most.
[reply]
[d/l]
      So you mention that the above is not the recommoned method of hiding passwords. Can I ask what is? By the way thanks for answering my question.
[reply]
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Re: Reading password from STDIN without echoing
by hardburn (Abbot) on Nov 14, 2003 at 19:00 UTC

    Try Term::ReadPassword, though I'm not sure if it works in a cross-platform manner. If not, you might be able to combine it with Win32::Console::ANSI.

    ----
    I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
    -- Schemer

    : () { :|:& };:

    Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated

[reply]
[d/l]
      No, Term::ReadKey is as portable as it gets. 
      E:\>perldoc -q password
Found in C:\Perl\lib\pod\perlfaq8.pod
  How do I ask the user for a password?
    (This question has nothing to do with the web. See a different FAQ
+ for
    that.)

    There's an example of this in "crypt" in perlfunc). First, you put
+ the
    terminal into "no echo" mode, then just read the password normally
+. You
    may do this with an old-style ioctl() function, POSIX terminal con
+trol
    (see POSIX or its documentation the Camel Book), or a call to the 
+stty
    program, with varying degrees of portability.

    You can also do this for most systems using the Term::ReadKey modu
+le
    from CPAN, which is easier to use and in theory more portable.

        use Term::ReadKey;

        ReadMode('noecho');
        $password = ReadLine(0);

      [download]

      MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
      I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
      ** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

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[d/l]
Re: Reading password from STDIN without echoing
by pg (Canon) on Nov 14, 2003 at 20:16 UTC

    If you don't insist STDIN, and open to GUI solution, I stripped piece of my old code, and here it is: (you don't need to port your entire application to GUI, just use this to get password. It can be easily wrapped in a function.)

    use Tk;
use Tk::DialogBox;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $mw = MainWindow->new(title => "Password Demo");

my $login_first_try = 1;    
my $id;
my $passwd;

while (1) {
    my $dialog = $mw->DialogBox(-buttons => ["OK", "Cancel"], -title =
+> "Login");
    my $instruction;
    if ($login_first_try) {
        $instruction = "Please provide id/passwd: ";
        $login_first_try = 0;
    } else {
        $instruction = "Failed to login, please try again: "
    }

    $dialog->add("Label", anchor => "w", text => $instruction)->pack(f
+ill => "x");
    my $id_text = $dialog->add("Entry", width => 30)->pack();
    my $passwd_text = $dialog->add("Entry", show => "*", width => 30)-
+>pack();
    $id_text->focus();
    if ($dialog->Show() eq "OK") {
        print "OK pressed, validate here, if okay last and quit the wh
+ile loop"
        #.............
    } else {
        exit;
    }
}

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

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