I recently answered this question on the beginners-perl mailing list. I think you might find the reponse very helpful.

    use Term::ReadKey;

    ReadMode('noecho');
    $password = ReadLine(0);
[download]

I've never used that before but some may be curious how I found it. Here's the trick:

    perldoc perltoc > perltoc.txt

That sends the perltoc (Perl Table of Contents) to a text file. I sometimes scan through this file to pick up new tricks. When I see something that interests me (such as "password"), I scan through the relevant entries. In this case, I saw the following entries:

    [snip]
    How do I clear the screen?
    How do I get the screen size?
    How do I ask the user for a password?
    How do I read and write the serial port?
    [snip]

The one about asking a user for a password looked useful, so I typed in:

    perldoc -q "How do I ask the user for a password?"

That actually gave a lot more information than what I sent you, so you should give it a try :)

The '-q' options stands for "FAQ keyword", but it can just as easily stand for 'question'.

Cheers,
Ovid

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