can a script provide input when prompted by shell?

Question

suppose i wanted to make a bunch of files full of gibberish. if i wanted to one file of gibberish, then encrypt it using ccrypt, i can do this:

$ echo "12 ddsd23" > randomfile.txt, now using ccrypt:

$ ccrypt -e randomfile.txt
Enter encryption key: 
Enter encryption key: (repeat)

as you can see i am prompted for input for the key.

i want to automate this and create a bunch of gibberish files.

script in python to produce random gibberish:

import random as rd
import string as st

alphs = st.ascii_letters
digits = st.digits
word = ""

while len(word) < 1000:
    word += str(rd.choices(alphs))
    word += str(rd.choices(digits))

print(word)

now running this from bash script, saving gibberish to file:

#!/bin/bash

count=1

while [ $count -le 100 ]
do
  python3 /path/r.py > "file$count.txt"
  ccrypt -e "file$count.txt"
  ((count=count+1))
done

problem, as you can see:

$ bash random.sh 
Enter encryption key:

ccrypt does not have an option to provide passphrase as an argument.

Question: is there a way for the bash script to provide the passphrase when shell prompts for it?

i am aware this can be solved just by doing the encryption in python but just curious if something like this can be done with bash.

if it matters: there is an option for ccrypt to ask for just one prompt.

Answer 1

[Edited]

My original answer suggested to do:

printf "$PASSPHRASE\n$PASSPHRASE\n" | ccrypt -e "file$count.txt"

which is the generic solution that should work with many tools that expect some input passed to their STDIN; but it doesn't seem to work with ccrypt for whatever reason.

However, ccrypt also has options for providing the passphrase in different (non-interactive) ways:

$ ccrypt --help
    ...
    -K, --key key         give keyword on command line (unsafe)
    -k, --keyfile file    read keyword(s) as first line(s) from file
    ...

Here's an example using -K. Note that it is "unsafe" because if you execute this command in your interactive shell, or run your script with -x (to print each executed command), the passphrase may end up in ~/.bash_history or in some logs, respectively, so dump the passphrase to a file and use -k in case that's important.

#!/bin/bash

# read the passphrase, do not display it to screen
read -p "Please provide a passphrase:" -s PASSPHRASE

count=1

while [ $count -le 100 ]
do
  python script.py > "file$count.txt"
  ccrypt -e "file$count.txt" -K "$PASSPHRASE"
  ((count=count+1))
done