The best answer is, of course, "don't pass passwords on the command line!". However...

You can change how your process appears in ps output by assigning to $0, like so: 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

$0 = 'renamed';
sleep 600;

[download]
Run this and you will have 10 minutes to look at ps and see that the process appears as renamed, not as whatever you saved the program as.

If you meant that your Perl code is calling other ftp/database scripts and passing username/password on the command line, then it's those other scripts that would need to do this (or something similar) to mask their command lines. The only way you'd be able to hide that information from the caller's side would be for your Perl to invoke them in interactive mode and use something like Expect to log in as if it were a human user running the (other) script.

In reply to Re: Hiding/masking your username or password by dsheroh
in thread Hiding/masking your username or password by newbie01.perl

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