:mod:getpass --- Portable password input

.. module:: getpass :synopsis: Portable reading of passwords and retrieval of the userid.

.. moduleauthor:: Piers Lauder [email protected] .. sectionauthor:: Fred L. Drake, Jr. [email protected] .. Windows (& Mac?) support by Guido van Rossum.

Source code: :source:Lib/getpass.py

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The :mod:getpass module provides two functions:

.. function:: getpass(prompt='Password: ', stream=None)

Prompt the user for a password without echoing. The user is prompted using the string prompt, which defaults to 'Password: '. On Unix, the prompt is written to the file-like object stream using the replace error handler if needed. stream defaults to the controlling terminal (:file:/dev/tty) or if that is unavailable to sys.stderr (this argument is ignored on Windows).

If echo free input is unavailable getpass() falls back to printing a warning message to stream and reading from sys.stdin and issuing a :exc:GetPassWarning.

.. note:: If you call getpass from within IDLE, the input may be done in the terminal you launched IDLE from rather than the idle window itself.

.. exception:: GetPassWarning

A :exc:UserWarning subclass issued when password input may be echoed.

.. function:: getuser()

Return the "login name" of the user.

This function checks the environment variables :envvar:LOGNAME, :envvar:USER, :envvar:LNAME and :envvar:USERNAME, in order, and returns the value of the first one which is set to a non-empty string. If none are set, the login name from the password database is returned on systems which support the :mod:pwd module, otherwise, an exception is raised.

In general, this function should be preferred over :func:os.getlogin().