Content-type: text/html Man page of getpass

getpass

Section: Standard C Library Functions (3C)
Updated: 2 Sep 2003
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NAME

getpass, getpassphrase - read a string of characters without echo  

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdlib.h>

char *getpass(const char *prompt);

char *getpassphrase(const char *prompt);  

XPG4, SUS, SUSv2

#include <unistd.h>

char *getpass(const char *prompt);  

DESCRIPTION

The getpass() function opens the process's controlling terminal, writes to that device the null-terminated string prompt, disables echoing, reads a string of characters up to the next newline character or EOF, restores the terminal state and closes the terminal.

The getpassphrase() function is identical to getpass(), except that it reads and returns a string of up to 257 characters in length.  

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, getpass() returns a pointer to a null-terminated string of at most 9 bytes that were read from the terminal device. If an error is encountered, the terminal state is restored and a null pointer is returned.  

ERRORS

The getpass() and getpassphrase() functions may fail if:

EINTR The function was interrupted by a signal.

EIO The process is a member of a background process attempting to read from its controlling terminal, the process is ignoring or blocking the SIGTTIN signal or the process group is orphaned.

EMFILE OPEN_MAX file descriptors are currently open in the calling process.

ENFILE The maximum allowable number of files is currently open in the system.

ENXIO The process does not have a controlling terminal.

 

USAGE

The return value points to static data whose content may be overwritten by each call.  

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPEATTRIBUTE VALUE
Interface Stabilitygetpass() is Standard.
MT-LevelUnsafe

 

SEE ALSO

attributes(5), standards(5)


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
XPG4, SUS, SUSv2
DESCRIPTION
RETURN VALUES
ERRORS
USAGE
ATTRIBUTES
SEE ALSO

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Time: 02:37:19 GMT, October 02, 2010