Debian Bug report logs - #651446
dash builtin read has no -s option for silent

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Glenn Haecker <ghaecker@idworld.net>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: dash builtin read has no -s option for silent

Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:12:04 -0600

Package: dash
Version: 0.5.7-2
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

POSIX compliant or not, it would be nice to have an -s (silent) option fro the
builtin read command.  It's quite useful for inputing a password.

Thanks for considering it.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages dash depends on:
ii  debianutils  4.0.4   
ii  dpkg         1.16.1.2
ii  libc6        2.13-21 

dash recommends no packages.

dash suggests no packages.

-- debconf information:
* dash/sh: true

Message #10 received at 651446@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>

To: Glenn Haecker <ghaecker@idworld.net>

Cc: 651446@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: dash builtin read has no -s option for silent

Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2011 11:27:26 -0600

tags 651446 + upstream wontfix
quit

Hi,

Glenn Haecker wrote:

> POSIX compliant or not, it would be nice to have an -s (silent) option fro the
> builtin read command.  It's quite useful for inputing a password.

Thanks, sounds useful indeed.

dash is meant to be as small and fast as possible given the functionality
it aims to provide (POSIX and some backward compatibility features).  So
while you are free to submit this change to dash@vger.kernel.org and it
may even be accepted if it is made optional at compile time, a simpler
approach would be to add it to POSIX.

Unfortunately, the "-s" option is already in use for a different
purpose in ksh93 (Debian package "ksh"):

	If the -s option is present, the input will be saved as a
	command in the history file.

If you want this functionality in POSIX, it would presumably have to
use a different letter.  See http://www.austingroupbugs.net/ and
http://www.opengroup.org/austin/ if interested in working on that.

Sincerely,
Jonathan

Message #17 received at 651446@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Jilles Tjoelker <jilles@stack.nl>

To: 651446@bugs.debian.org, Glenn Haecker <ghaecker@idworld.net>

Subject: Re: dash builtin read has no -s option for silent

Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:25:31 +0100

> [dash's read does not have -s to turn off echo]

You can turn off echoing using a sequence like

settings=$(stty -g)
stty -echo
IFS= read -r password
stty "$settings"

Some additional code is required to restore the terminal settings even
if SIGINT, SIGQUIT, SIGTERM or similar happens.

-- 
Jilles Tjoelker

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