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15.10. Reading Passwords
15.10.1. Problem
You want to read input from the keyboard
without the keystrokes being echoed on the screen. For instance, you
want to read passwords as passwd does, i.e.,
without displaying the user's password.
15.10.2. Solution
Use the CPAN module Term::ReadKey, set the input mode to
noecho, and then use
ReadLine:
use Term::ReadKey;
ReadMode('noecho');
$password = ReadLine(0);
15.10.3. Discussion
Example 15-3 shows how to verify a user's password.
If your system uses shadow passwords, only the superuser can get the
encrypted form of the password with getpwuid.
Everyone else just gets * as the password field of
the database, which is useless for verifying passwords.
Example 15-3. checkuser
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# checkuser - demonstrates reading and checking a user's password
use Term::ReadKey;
print "Enter your password: ";
ReadMode 'noecho';
$password = ReadLine 0;
chomp $password;
ReadMode 'normal';
print "\n";
($username, $encrypted) = ( getpwuid $<)[0,1];
if (crypt($password, $encrypted) ne $encrypted) {
die "You are not $username\n";
} else {
print "Welcome, $username\n";
}
15.10.4. See Also
The documentation for the Term::ReadKey module from CPAN; the
crypt and getpwuid functions in
Chapter 29 of Programming Perl and in
perlfunc(1), which demonstrate using the
stty(1) command; your system's
crypt(3) and passwd(5)
manpages (if you have them)
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15.9. Checking for Waiting Input | ![]() | 15.11. Editing Input |

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