macOS [CODE] password system in C language

brenopop · Jan 4, 2015

Dear friends, I wanna write a code in C that when the user writes something, doesn't show what they wrote, instead, the program shows only asterisks.
I can't find a function to do this, because scanf, gets or getchar don`t hide what the user write.

summarizing, I want to do a login system that doesn't show up what the user write in the password field.

Red Menace · Jan 4, 2015

Take a look at NSSecureTextField.

brenopop · Jan 4, 2015

Red Menace said:
Take a look at NSSecureTextField.

Man, I'm sorry, but I'm not understanding this site. If you could make a simple example to show me, I'll thank you a lot.

~ Edited ~
I was looking for this and I found something interesting: the function getch(). BUT, it doesn't work, even with the curses library. Help

subsonix · Jan 4, 2015

brenopop said:
Man, I'm sorry, but I'm not understanding this site. If you could make a simple example to show me, I'll thank you a lot.

~ Edited ~
I was looking for this and I found something interesting: the function getch(). BUT, it does't work, even with the curses library. Help

You can't use getch by itself, curses require you to do some initial setup and cleanup. I assume you are using Terminal so try the getpass function. I reads from the terminal to an internal buffer and turns off character echo to stdout.

Read more about the function with: man getpass in the terminal.

brenopop · Jan 4, 2015

subsonix said:
You can't use getch by itself, curses require you to do some initial setup and cleanup. I assume you are using Terminal so try the getpass function. I reads from the terminal to an internal buffer and turns off character echo to stdout.

Read more about the function with: man getpass in the terminal.

Thank you, man. And how can i use curses? this initial setup and cleanup, How can I do it?

subsonix · Jan 4, 2015

brenopop said:
Thank you, man. And how can i use curses? this initial setup and cleanup, How can I do it?

Well, look up some tutorial on curses if you want to use that. I mean you can use noecho with curses, but it uses its own functions to read and write to the screen, after you do the initial setup, depending on what you want. But, I assume you want to use the normal terminal and just get a string without echo to stdout, getpass does that in 1 line.

brenopop · Jan 4, 2015

subsonix said:
Well, look up some tutorial on curses if you want to use that. I mean you can use noecho with curses, but it uses it's own functions to read and write to the screen, after you do the initial setup, depending on what you want. But, I assume you want to use the normal terminal and just get a string without echo to stdout, getpass does that in 1 line.

Yeah, that's what I want. Thank you so much.

brenopop · Jan 4, 2015

There's a problem now, I don't know how to use getpass() and how to make show up "*" instead the input of keyboard.

ArtOfWarfare · Jan 5, 2015

brenopop said:
There's a problem now, I don't know how to use getpass() and how to make show up "*" instead the input of keyboard.

I just want to mention that having * show up is:

1 - Less secure, as people watching the screen now know the password length.

2 - Not normal for a command line program.

Senor Cuete · Jan 5, 2015

Red Menace said:
Take a look at NSSecureTextField.

It would be quite easy to create a dialog that would require a user to type a password into a secure text field using XCode and Cocoa.

brenopop · Jan 5, 2015

ArtOfWarfare said:
I just want to mention that having * show up is:

1 - Less secure, as people watching the screen now know the password length.

2 - Not normal for a command line program.

What can I do instead?
Isn't that the pattern for password in almost everything?

----------

Senor Cuete said:
It would be quite easy to create a dialog that would require a user to type a password into a secure text field using XCode and Cocoa.

I see, but it is a homework that we suppose to do all of this in C.
anyway, thank you for help. My next task will be bend Cocoa hehe

ArtOfWarfare · Jan 5, 2015

brenopop said:
What can I do instead?
Isn't that the pattern for password in almost everything?

No, the normal thing for passwords on a command line are that they don't show anything as you type them.

If you're making a command line program that needs the user to enter a password, I would suggest making it behave the same as other command line programs and show nothing as the password is entered. To replicate this, just use getpass().

If you're making a program with a GUI, then those normally show an asterisk for each character entered. You should use the proper password input widget for whatever GUI framework you're using - as others mentioned, in Cocoa the proper widget is the NSSecureTextField.

But you said this program is in C, which suggests you're probably not going to have a GUI, as programs with GUIs are normally done in Obj-C or C++ instead of pure C (or some other language entirely.)

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macOS [CODE] password system in C language

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