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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Destroying arguments
Message-ID: <701@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 23-May-87 15:03:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.701
Posted: Sat May 23 15:03:47 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 24-May-87 01:27:50 EDT
References: <292@osupyr.UUCP> <239@polyof.UUCP> <485@bene.UUCP> <6723@mimsy.UUCP> <1056@hropus.UUCP> <19590@sun.uucp>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Distribution: comp.unix.questions
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 22

In article <19590@sun.uucp> guy%gorodish@Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>If I wanted to pass a password safely to a program, I'd have the
>program ask me for the password and I'd type it in!

I once wanted to write a shell script that would invoke crypt.  The
shell script prompted for the password, then later invoked crypt and
supplied the password to it.

The problem I ran into was that there seemed to be no way (at that
time, on a 4.2BSD system; I haven't tried recently under 4.3BSD) to let
crypt read the password from the script.  The only way seemed to be
either to let crypt read it from the terminal or get it from a
parameter.  Reading from the terminal was not practical because I was
using a script that encrypted a large number of files using the same
password, and typing in the password multiple times is a pain.
Supplying the password to crypt as a parameter was obviously
unacceptable.

I eventually gave up trying to do it from a shell script.  It would
probably have been necessary to write an executable program.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi