R: Way to securely give a password to R application?

Question

Does R have a function that allows a user to provide a password securely, such as Python's getpass module?

(see http://docs.python.org/library/getpass.html for an example of what I mean)

Answer 1

What exactly would you be using this for? If its a web-based authentication there is a password authentication function in the Rcurl package.

Answer 2

The problem is that R does not have functions to control the terminal it is running in (something like Rncurses); probably this is due to portability issues.
Some time ago I was struggling with the same problem and I ended up with a function using TclTk:

getPass<-function(){  
  require(tcltk);  
  wnd<-tktoplevel();tclVar("")->passVar;  
  #Label  
  tkgrid(tklabel(wnd,text="Enter password:"));  
  #Password box  
  tkgrid(tkentry(wnd,textvariable=passVar,show="*")->passBox);  
  #Hitting return will also submit password  
  tkbind(passBox,"<Return>",function() tkdestroy(wnd));  
  #OK button  
  tkgrid(tkbutton(wnd,text="OK",command=function() tkdestroy(wnd)));  
  #Wait for user to click OK  
  tkwait.window(wnd);  
  password<-tclvalue(passVar);  
  return(password);  
}  

Of course it won't work in non-GUI environments.