Obscuring user input in command line programs

Question

I'm writing a few functions for getting and storing a user password. It's all working OK but is there any way of replacing what is typed at the prompt with an asterisk, for example?

This is fairly standard behaviour in windowed applications I've had a good look through the C libraries but all of the fgets/getc type functions don't seem to offer any control over this.

EDIT: trying to do this with ANSI C, running on OS X. Answers below have pointed me in the right direction - my search didn't turn up a few of the links...

Answer 1

Assuming POSIX:

struct termios t;
tcgetattr(STDIN_FILENO, &t);
t.c_lflag &= ~ECHO;
tcsetattr(STDIN_FILENO, TCSAFLUSH, &t);

Then no user input will be echoed. Set back the ECHO flag if you want to undo this.

Answer 2

Sure, use some kind of terminal control library to disable character echo and then print whatever you like. Possibilities:

• termio
• curses
• ncurses

Answer 3

You didn't say which platform or compiler, but see ANSI C No-echo keyboard input . Maybe getch() or kbhit() or getpass(), depending on environment.