Python 3.6.5 Documentation >  "getpass" — Portable password input

"getpass" — Portable password input
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**Source code:** Lib/getpass.py

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The "getpass" module provides two functions:

getpass.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 ("/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 "GetPassWarning".

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 getpass.GetPassWarning

A "UserWarning" subclass issued when password input may be echoed.

getpass.getuser()

Return the “login name” of the user.

This function checks the environment variables "LOGNAME", "USER",
"LNAME" and "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 "pwd" module, otherwise, an exception is raised.

In general, this function should be preferred over "os.getlogin()".