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?
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.
In some shells (e.g. Bash) read supports -p prompt-string which will allow the echo and read commands to be combined:
read -s -p "Password: " password