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\section{\module{getpass}
--- Portable password input}
\declaremodule{standard}{getpass}
\modulesynopsis{Portable reading of passwords and retrieval of the userid.}
\moduleauthor{Piers Lauder}{piers@cs.su.oz.au}
% Windows (& Mac?) support by Guido van Rossum.
\sectionauthor{Fred L. Drake, Jr.}{fdrake@acm.org}
The \module{getpass} module provides two functions:
\begin{funcdesc}{getpass}{\optional{prompt\optional{, stream}}}
Prompt the user for a password without echoing. The user is
prompted using the string \var{prompt}, which defaults to
\code{'Password: '}. On \UNIX, the prompt is written to the
file-like object \var{stream}, which defaults to
\code{sys.stdout} (this argument is ignored on Windows).
Availability: Macintosh, \UNIX, Windows.
\versionadded[The \var{stream} parameter]{2.5}
\end{funcdesc}
\begin{funcdesc}{getuser}{}
Return the ``login name'' of the user.
Availability: \UNIX, Windows.
This function checks the environment variables \envvar{LOGNAME},
\envvar{USER}, \envvar{LNAME} and \envvar{USERNAME}, in order, and
returns the value of the first one which is set to a non-empty
string. If none are set, the login name from the password database
is returned on systems which support the \refmodule{pwd} module,
otherwise, an exception is raised.
\end{funcdesc}