How to get a password from a shell script without echoing

Question

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 his/her 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?

Answer 1

Turn echo off using stty, then back on again after.

Answer 2

#!/bin/bash
stty -echo
printf "Password: "
read PASSWORD
stty echo
printf "\n"

Answer 3

#!/bin/bash
# Read Password
echo -n Password: 
read -s password
echo
# Run Command
echo $password

Here is another way to do it. The read -s will turn off echo for you. Just replace the echo on the last line with the command you want to run.