6.11 getpass -- Portable password input
Keywords: lib

# 6.11 `getpass` -- Portable password input

The `getpass` module provides two functions:

`getpass` ([prompt])
  Prompt the user for a password without echoing. The user is prompted using the string prompt, which defaults to `'Password: '`. Availability: Macintosh, Unix, Windows.

`getuser` ()
  Return the ``login name'' of the user. Availability: Unix, Windows.

  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.