How to get a password from a shell script without echoing

bash shell scripting sh
BD at Rivenhill picture BD at Rivenhill · Oct 20, 2010 · Viewed 385.1k times · Source

I have a script that automates a process that needs access to a password protected system. The system is accessed via a command-line program that accepts the user password as an argument.

I would like to prompt the user to type in their password, assign it to a shell variable, and then use that variable to construct the command line of the accessing program (which will of course produce stream output that I will process).

I am a reasonably competent shell programmer in Bourne/Bash, but I don't know how to accept the user input without having it echo to the terminal (or maybe having it echoed using '*' characters).

Can anyone help with this?

Answer

wsware picture wsware · Oct 20, 2010

Here is another way to do it:

#!/bin/bash
# Read Password
echo -n Password: 
read -s password
echo
# Run Command
echo $password

The read -s will turn off echo for you. Just replace the echo on the last line with the command you want to run.

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