blob: 211563e23e56b07658cd85634dbd4944855236f4 [file] [log] [blame]
:mod:`getpass` --- Portable password input
==========================================
.. module:: getpass
:synopsis: Portable reading of passwords and retrieval of the userid.
.. moduleauthor:: Piers Lauder <piers@cs.su.oz.au>
.. sectionauthor:: Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake@acm.org>
.. Windows (& Mac?) support by Guido van Rossum.
The :mod:`getpass` module provides two functions:
.. function:: getpass(prompt='Password: ', stream=None)
Prompt the user for a password without echoing. The user is prompted using
the string *prompt*, which defaults to ``'Password: '``. On Unix, the
prompt is written to the file-like object *stream* using the replace error
handler if needed. *stream* defaults to the controlling terminal
(:file:`/dev/tty`) or if that is unavailable to ``sys.stderr`` (this
argument is ignored on Windows).
If echo free input is unavailable getpass() falls back to printing
a warning message to *stream* and reading from ``sys.stdin`` and
issuing a :exc:`GetPassWarning`.
Availability: Macintosh, Unix, Windows.
.. note::
If you call getpass from within IDLE, the input may be done in the
terminal you launched IDLE from rather than the idle window itself.
.. exception:: GetPassWarning
A :exc:`UserWarning` subclass issued when password input may be echoed.
.. function:: 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 :mod:`pwd` module, otherwise, an exception is raised.