Question

I know that command line interfaces like Git and others are able to hide input from a user (useful for passwords). Is there a way to programmtically do this in Java? I’m taking password input from a user and I would like their input to be “hidden” on that particular line (but not on all of them). Here’s my code for it (though I doubt it would be helpful…)

try (Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in)) {
  //I'm guessing it'd probably be some property you set on the scanner or System.in right here...
  System.out.print("Please input the password for " + name + ": ");
  password = input.nextLine();
}

Answer 1

Try java.io.Console.readPassword.

   /**
    * Reads a password or passphrase from the console with echoing disabled
    *
    * @throws IOError
    *         If an I/O error occurs.
    *
    * @return  A character array containing the password or passphrase read
    *          from the console, not including any line-termination characters,
    *          or <tt>null</tt> if an end of stream has been reached.
    */
    public char[] readPassword() {
        return readPassword("");
    }

Beware though, this doesn’t work with the Eclipse console. You’ll have to run the program from a true console/shell/terminal/prompt to be able to test it.