Ghosted input

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

I want to make a ghosted input for a password in one of my programs. Fiddling around with some sample code from the getc() manual, I finally came up with this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

$BSD_STYLE = 1;
if ($BSD_STYLE) {
    system "stty cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
}
else {
    system "stty", '-icanon', 'eol', "\001";
}

my $in = '';
while (($key = getc(STDIN)) ne "\n") {
    $in .= $key;
    print "\x08 \x08";
}

if ($BSD_STYLE) {
    system "stty -cbreak </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1";
}
else {
    system "stty", 'icanon', 'eol', '^@'; # ASCII null
}
print "$in\n";
[download]

This seems to work perfectly, BUT. Is there an easier/better way of doing this? Failing that, does anyone have any ideas on how to detect whether $BSD_STYLE should be set or not? I was thinking maybe running stty with some parameters and checking the output for some sort of signatures, but this seems to me to be a "bad" solution.

monoxide
I am undecided...

Comment on Ghosted input Download Code

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Re: Ghosted input by naikonta (Curate) on Jun 15, 2007 at 04:14 UTC
Well, If you don't mind to use a module :) `use strict; use warnings; use Term::ReadKey; my $hint = "I'm not going to tell you! You knew it already"; print "Username: "; chomp(my $user = <STDIN>); # validate $user print "Password: "; ReadMode 'noecho'; chomp(my $pass = <STDIN>); ReadMode 'normal'; # validate $pass print "\nYou said: username=$user, password=($hint)\n";` [download] Open source softwares? Share and enjoy. Make profit from them if you can. Yet, share and enjoy!	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Ghosted input by monoxide (Beadle) on Jun 15, 2007 at 04:34 UTC
Aha! This is exactly what I'm looking for thankyou. I don't mind using a module, and I tried a quick search of CPAN, but couldn't find anything. monoxide	[reply]
Re: Ghosted input by tirwhan (Abbot) on Jun 15, 2007 at 08:04 UTC
The easiest way I know is using IO::Prompt `use IO::Prompt; my $passwd = prompt("Enter password: ", -e => ""); print $passwd;` [download] Note: IO::Prompt autochomps the input for you, so no need to do that manually. Similarly, the popular method of printing a star for each typed character: `use IO::Prompt; my $passwd = prompt("Enter password: ", -e => ""); print $passwd;` [download] All dogma is stupid.*	[reply] [d/l] [select]