Let see how to read the password without echoing back

First, create a file named ” User.sh ” using the following command

$ touch User.sh

Now open ” User.sh ” in the text editor 

$ nano User.sh

Now write the below bash script into ” User.sh “

#!/bin/bash
echo "Enter Username : "

# read username and echo username in terminal
read username
echo "Enter Password : "

# password is read in silent mode i.e. it will
# show nothing instead of password.
read -s password 
echo
echo "Your password is read in silent mode." 

Note: Here ‘ -s ‘ is used to read passwords because it will read passwords in silent mode. 

Now save the above bash script and run ” User.sh ” by following the command

$ chmod +x ./User.sh
$ ./User.sh

Output : 

Here, we can see clearly that the above script will read username as well as password but it does not echo the password.

Generally, you can see on the login page, whenever we type a password either it show dot (•) or asterisk (*) instead of a password. They do so because to protect our system or account. In such a case, the login page read the password and in place of the password, it will show a dot or asterisk. And in some cases, a dot or asterisk also may not appear it means it displays nothing in place of a password.