Bash - read password in script without displaying characters

In this short article, we would like to show how to read password in Bash without displaying characters in the terminal.

Quick solution:

xxxxxxxxxx

#!/bin/bash

​

read -s -p "Password: " password

Where:

• -s prevents against typed characters displaying,
• -p "Password: " prints Password:  message,
• password is the name of the variable that will store the typed password.

Paste the following code into your bash script (e.g. password.sh file).

xxxxxxxxxx

#!/bin/bash

​

read -s -p "Password: " password

echo

​

if [ "$password" = 'secret_password' ]

then

    echo "User authenticated...";

else

    echo "Typed incorrect password!";

fi

​

read

Example result: