Question

OK, I am trying to write a simple object that will contain two strings, one a “user password” and one a “target password,” this would be needed if you wanted to script a password change on a remote server using sudo (the first password would be to perform the sudo command, the “target password” would be the string to which the password should be reset.

I want the user to be prompted once for the first password, and then the user will have five tries to enter a second password string and repeat it accurately. What I came up with, the code below, does not seem to work. Any ideas?

require 'pp' 
require 'RubyGems'
require 'highline/import'  #gem install highline

class Authorization

attr_reader :user_password , :target_password

 pass_code = lambda {
 first_attempt = ask("Enter target password:  "){ |q| q.echo = '*' }
 second_attempt = ask("Re-enter password to verify"){ |q| q.echo = '*'}
}

 ### So we need some sort of recursive loop

def initialize(target_pass=false)
@user_password = ask("Enter your admin password:  ") { |q| q.echo = '*' }

if target_pass
  count = 1
  while n < 6
  pass_code

      if first_attempt == second_attempt
        @target_password =  first_attempt
        return
      else
        count += 1  
      end
    end
  end 

    end
  end

   my_pass = Authorization.new(true)

   pp "pass" , my_pass

Answer 1

I see several problems

• It’s require "rubygems" (not RubyGems)
• Also, if using Ruby 1.9, loading rubygems isn’t necessary.
• The lambda has locally scoped variables assigned that aren’t available in the constructor
• The lambda definition itself is out of scope for access anyway
• The loop never terminates (btw, this isn’t recursion).

Try something like this instead.

require "highline/import"

class Authorization
  attr_accessor :user_password, :target_password

  def prompt(prompt_for_target = false)
    self.user_password = ask_for_password("Enter your admin password")
    return unless prompt_for_target

    5.times do
      password     = ask_for_password("Enter target password")
      confirmation = ask_for_password("Re-enter password to verify")

      if password == confirmation
        self.target_password = password
        return
      end
    end
  end

  private

  def ask_for_password(message)
    ask("#{message}: ") { |q| q.echo = '*' }
  end
end

auth = Authorization.new
auth.prompt(true)

puts auth.user_password
puts auth.target_password