Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rpi!tale
From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: Re: Getting Emacs to not echo characters
Message-ID: <257078E5.7EF@rpi.edu>
Date: 26 Nov 89 23:59:32 GMT
References: <741@milton.acs.washington.edu>
	<DEVEN.89Nov26160956@netserv2.rpi.edu>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
Lines: 29

In <DEVEN.89Nov26160956@netserv2.rpi.edu> deven@rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine):
Deven> Since this may be of general usefulness, I am posting this as well as
Deven> Email to the original poster.  [credit due to tale@rpi.edu for
Deven> function, I modified to select minibuffer window when prompting for a
Deven> password.]

I wish you had asked me about this first; when you informed me of your
idea a couple of months ago, I did it "the right way", because your
modifications did not work for putting the cursor in the minibuffer
when I incorporated it verbatim into another package.  Pete already
had the correct function last night, but now, for the sake of everyone else:

(defun read-passwd (&optional prompt)
  "Allow user to type a string without it showing.  Returns string.
If optional PROMPT non-nil, use it as the prompt string in the minibuffer." 
  ;; this is based on a similar function in telnet.el
  ;; the major drawback is that while being prompted for a password
  ;; it stays in this routine until C-g, RET or LFD is typed.
  (let ((passwd "") (echo-keystrokes 0) (cursor-in-echo-area t) char)
    (if prompt (message prompt))
    (while (not (or (= (setq char (read-char)) 13) (= char 10)))
      ;; naughty bit.  take C-h to mean DEL.
      (if (or (= char 8) (= char 127))
          (if (> (length passwd) 0)
              (setq passwd (substring passwd 0 (1- (length passwd)))))
        (setq passwd (concat passwd (char-to-string char))))
      (if prompt (message (concat prompt (make-string (length passwd) ?*)))))
    (if prompt (message ""))
    passwd))