Can I mask an input text in a bat file

Question

I am writing a batch file to execute some other programs  In this case I need to prompt for a password  Do I have any way to mask the input text  I don t need to print         characters instead of input characters  Linux s Password prompt behavior  Print nothing while typing  is enough       echo off SET  P variable Password    echo  variable  Pause   This will read the input but I can t mask the text using this approach

User · Answer

I wrote an open source program called editenv that replaces my older editv32 editv64 utilities  https   github com Bill-Stewart editenv The --maskinput  -m  option    lets you hide  mask  the typed input and has a configurable character  default character is     e g   editenv -m -p  quot Password   quot  PWD  The --prompt  -p  option lets you specify an input prompt  The above will display a Password  prompt and wait for you to enter something  Typed characters will appear as    Pressing Ctrl C will end the program with an exit code of 1223  Download is here  https   github com Bill-Stewart editenv releases     Note that the --maskinput  -m  option is not secure -- the entered string is entered as plain-text in the environment  This feature is for convenience only

User · Answer

You can set the forground color to black such     see https   stackoverflow com questions 33293220 what-is-the-fastest-color-function-in-batch  echo off for  F   a in   echo prompt  E    cmd   do set  quot ESC   a quot  set color white  ESC  37m set color black  ESC  30m echo  set  p user Username  set  p pass password  color black  echo  color white  echo blablablba  Enjoy    C

User · Answer

Yes - I am 4 years late   But I found a way to do this in one line without having to create an external script  by calling powershell commands from a batch file   Thanks to TessellatingHeckler - without outputting to a text file  I set the powershell command in a variable  because it s pretty messy in one long line inside a for loop     echo off set  psCommand powershell -Command   pword   read-host  Enter Password  -AsSecureString          BSTR  System Runtime InteropServices Marshal   SecureStringToBSTR  pword              System Runtime InteropServices Marshal   PtrToStringAuto  BSTR    for  f  usebackq delims     p in    psCommand    do set password   p echo  password    Originally I wrote it to output to a text file  then read from that text file  But the above method is better  In one extremely long  near incomprehensible line    echo off powershell -Command  pword   read-host  Enter password  -AsSecureString    BSTR  System Runtime InteropServices Marshal   SecureStringToBSTR  pword     System Runtime InteropServices Marshal   PtrToStringAuto  BSTR   gt   tmp txt  amp  set  p password  lt  tmp txt  amp  del  tmp txt echo  password    I ll break this down - you can split it up over a few lines using caret    which is much nicer      echo off powershell -Command  pword   read-host  Enter password  -AsSecureString          BSTR  System Runtime InteropServices Marshal   SecureStringToBSTR  pword               System Runtime InteropServices Marshal   PtrToStringAuto  BSTR   gt   tmp txt  set  p password  lt  tmp txt  amp  del  tmp txt echo  password    This article explains what the powershell commands are doing  essentially it gets input using Read-Host -AsSecureString - the following two lines convert that secure string back into plain text  the output  plaintext password  is then sent to a text file using  gt  tmp txt  That file is then read into a variable and deleted

User · Answer

I read all the clunky solutions on the net about how to mask passwords in a batch file  the ones from using a hide com solution and even the ones that make the text and the background the same color  The hide com solution works decent  it isn t very secure  and it doesn t work in 64-bit Windows  So anyway  using 100  Microsoft utilities  there is a way   First  let me explain my use  I have about 20 workstations that auto logon to Windows  They have one shortcut on their desktop - to a clinical application  The machines are locked down  they can t right click  they can t do anything but access the one shortcut on their desktop  Sometimes it is necessary for a technician to kick up some debug applications  browse windows explorer and look at log files without logging the autolog user account off   So here is what I have done   Do it however you wish  but I put my two batch files on a network share that the locked down computer has access to   My solution utilizes 1 main component of Windows - runas  Put a shortcut on the clients to the runas bat you are about to create  FYI  on my clients I renamed the shortcut for better viewing purposes and changed the icon   You will need to create two batch files   I named the batch files runas bat and Debug Support bat  runas bat contains the following code   cls  echo off TITLE CHECK CREDENTIALS  goto menu   menu cls echo  echo                                                echo             Written by Cajun Wonder 4 1 2010  echo                                                echo   set  p un What is your domain username   if   un     PUT-YOUR-DOMAIN-USERNAME-HERE  goto debugsupport if not   un     PUT-YOUR-DOMAIN-USERNAME-HERE  goto noaccess echo   debugsupport   SYSTEMROOT  system32 runas   netonly  user PUT-YOUR-DOMAIN-NAME-HERE  un     PUT-YOUR-NETWORK-SHARE-PATH-HERE Debug Support bat   echo ACCESS GRANTED  LAUNCHING THE DEBUG UTILITIES      ping -n 4 127 0 0 1  gt  NUL goto quit  noaccess cls  echo   echo   echo   echo   echo                                            echo                                            echo         Insufficient privileges               echo                                             echo           Call Cajun Wonder                 echo                                             echo                   At                        echo                                             echo             555-555-5555                    echo                                             echo                                             ping -n 4 127 0 0 1  gt  NUL goto quit  pause  quit  exit   You can add as many if   un   and if not   un   for all the users you want to give access to  The  ping is my coonass way of making a seconds timer   So that takes care of the first batch file - pretty simple eh   Here is the code for Debug Support bat   cls  echo off TITLE SUPPORT UTILITIES goto menu   menu cls  echo  username  echo  echo                                                 echo             Written by Cajun Wonder 4 1 2010  echo                                                 echo  echo What do you want to do   echo  echo  1   Launch notepad echo    choice set  P C  Option    if   C     1  goto notepad goto choice   notepad echo   echo starting notepad      ping -n 3 127 0 0 1  gt  NUL start notepad cls goto menu   I m not a coder and really just started getting into batch scripting about a year ago  and this round about way that I discovered of masking a password in a batch file is pretty awesome   I hope to hear that someone other than me is able to get some use out of it

User · Answer

If the lack of source code bothers you  I have another alternative    echo off for  f  delims     p in   ReadLine -h -p  Enter password      do set PWD   p echo You entered   PWD    You can get it from https   westmesatech com  page id 49  Source code is included

User · Answer

If you have Python installed  you can use   for  f  delims     A in   python -c  import getpass  print getpass getpass  Enter the CVS password          do  set CVSPASS   A echo PASS   CVSPASS    the output   Enter the CVS password  PASS  123

User · Answer

make a batch file that calls the one needed for invisible characters then make a shortcut for the batch file being called   right click  properties  colors  text  black  background    black  apply  ok  hope thus helps you

User · Answer

I would probably just do      echo Before you enter your password  make sure no-one is looking  set  P password Password    cls echo Thanks  got that        So you get a prompt  then the screen clears after it s entered   Note that the entered password will be stored in the CMD history if the batch file is executed from a command prompt  Thanks  Mark K Cowan    If that wasn t good enough  I would either switch to python  or write an executable instead of a script   I know none of these are perfect soutions  but maybe one is good enough for you

User · Answer

This may be an older topic  but if you are using Windows Vista or 7  I have a solution that will work very well  I made a video of it here  http   www youtube com watch v mk8uAa6PIFM   Pastebin for the batch file is here

User · Answer

1 Pure batch solution that  ab uses XCOPY command and its  P  L switches found here  some improvements on this could be found here        Hidden cmd   Tom Lavedas  02 05 2013  02 20 2013   Carlos  02 22 2013   https   groups google com forum   topic alt msdos batch nt f7mb f99lYI    Echo Off  HInput SetLocal EnableExtensions EnableDelayedExpansion Set  FILE  Temp   T  Set  FILE   T  Keys List  gt   File   Set  P   Hidden text ending with Ctrl-C      lt Nul Echo  Set  HInput    HInput  For  F  tokens 1  delims      A In      Xcopy  P  L   FILE     FILE   2 gt Nul     Do     Set  Text   B    If Defined Text       Set  Char  Text  1 1       Set  Intro 1      For  F delims    eol     Z in    Char    Do Set  Intro 0      Rem If press Intro     If 1 Equ  Intro  Goto  HInput      Set  HInput  HInput  Char         Goto  HInput   HInput  Echo  HInput  Goto  Eof    1 2 Another way based on replace command   Echo Off SetLocal EnableExtensions EnableDelayedExpansion  Set  P   Enter a Password    lt  Nul Call  PasswordInput Echo Your input was  Line   Goto  Eof   PasswordInput   Author  Carlos Montiers Aguilera   Last updated  20150401  Created  20150401    Set in variable Line a input password For  F skip  1  delims    eol       in     Echo  Replace exe    f0     U  W    Do Set  CR      For  F     In     Prompt  H  amp For     In     Do Rem    Do Set  BS      Set  Line     PasswordInput Kbd Set  CHR    amp  For  F skip  1  delims    eol       in    Replace exe    f0     U  W   Do Set  CHR      If  CHR    CR  Echo  amp Goto  Eof If  CHR    BS   If Defined Line  Set  P    BS   BS    lt Nul Set  Line  Line  0 -1       Else  Set  P       lt Nul If  CHR      Set  Line  Line       Else Set  Line  Line  CHR     Goto   PasswordInput Kbd   2 Password submitter that uses a HTA pop-up   This is a hybrit  bat jscript mshta file and should be saved as a  bat    lt  --      PasswordSubmitter bat  echo off for  f  tokens   delims     p in   mshta exe    f0    do       set  pass   p     echo your password is  pass  exit  b -- gt    lt html gt   lt head gt  lt title gt Password submitter lt  title gt  lt  head gt   lt body gt        lt script language  javascript   gt          window resizeTo 300 150           function entperPressed e                   if  e keyCode    13                        pipePass                                        function pipePass                 var pass document getElementById  pass   value              var fso  new ActiveXObject  Scripting FileSystemObject   GetStandardStream 1               close fso Write pass                    lt  script gt        lt input type  password  name  pass  size  15  onkeypress  return entperPressed event    gt  lt  input gt       lt hr gt       lt button onclick  pipePass    gt Submit lt  button gt    lt  body gt   lt  html gt    3 A self-compiled  net hybrid  Again should be saved as  bat  In difference with other solutions it will create compile a small  exe file that will be called  if you wish you can delete it   Also requires installed  net framework but that s rather not a problem    if   X     Y   end    JScript comment  echo off setlocal enableDelayedExpansion  for  f  tokens   delims     v in   dir  b  s  a -d   o -n   SystemRoot  Microsoft NET Framework  jsc exe    do      set  jsc   v     if not exist    n0 exe          jsc    nologo  out    n0 exe     dpsfnx0     for  f  tokens   delims     p in      n0 exe    do       set  pass   p     echo your password is  pass   endlocal  amp  exit  b  errorlevel         import System     var pwd       var key   Console Error Write  Enter password               do              key   Console ReadKey true               if    key KeyChar ToString   charCodeAt 0    gt   20  amp  amp   key KeyChar ToString   charCodeAt 0   lt   126                    pwd pwd  key KeyChar ToString                   Console Error Write                                if   key Key    ConsoleKey Backspace  amp  amp  pwd Length  gt  0                    pwd pwd Remove pwd Length-1                  Console Error Write   b  b                             while  key Key    ConsoleKey Enter           Console Error WriteLine            Console WriteLine pwd

User · Answer

Another option  along the same lines as Blorgbeard is out s  is to use something like   SET  P pw C    gt    The   escapes the  gt  so that the password prompt will look like a standard cmd console prompt

User · Answer

UPDATE  I added two new methods that instead of utilizing cls to hide the input they create a new pop-up with one line only   The drawbacks are that one method  method 2  leaves junk in the registry -  If run without proper rights   and the other one  method three  appends some junk to the script  Needless to say that it can easily be written to any tmp file and deleted I just tried to come up with an alternative    Limitation  The password can only be alphanumeric - no other characters    echo off if   1    method choice   goto  method choice                       Your code here                      cls echo                                                                                 echo                        Batch script to prompt for password                      echo                                                                                  choice echo  echo 1  First method echo  echo 2  Second method echo  echo 3  Third method echo  set p choice Choose a method   if   choice   gtr  3  echo   amp  echo invalid option  amp  echo   amp  pause  amp  goto choice  call  vars     set options   num  smAlph  cpAlph      set pwdLen 6  if   choice       1        set  p Password   lt nul      for  l   i in  1 1  pwdLen   do call  password   else       start  wait cmd  c call    f0  method choice         call  result choice      just to see if it worked  echo  echo The Password you entered is    pwd   amp pause gt nul                       More code here                      exit  b       vars set num 1234567890 set smAlph abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz set cpAlph ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ     set pwd  goto  EOF    method2 call  popUp setx result  pwd   gt nul goto  EOF   method3 call  popUp      gt  gt     f0  echo       gt  gt     f0  echo  result choice       gt  gt     f0  echo set pwd  pwd  goto  EOF   popUp title Password mode con lines 1 cols 30 color 5a set  p Password   lt nul for  l   i in  1 1  pwdLen   do call  password goto  EOF   password    If you don t want case sensative remove   cs  but remember to remove  cpAlph  from the  options  choice  c  options   n  cs  gt nul     call SET pwd  pwd   options   errorlevel  1       set  p    lt nul GOTO  EOF    result2 for  f  tokens 3    a in   reg query hkcu environment  v result   do set pwd   a     setx result     gt nul     reg delete hkcu environment  v result  f  gt nul 2 gt  amp 1  result1 goto  EOF      You can delete from here whenever you want    Update  I found sachadee s post to be perfect and I just added my  pop-up  quirk to it    Echo Off     SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion   if   1     HInput  goto  HInput   set r r random    start  wait cmd  c call    f0   HInput  For  f  tokens 2 13 delims       a in        tasklist  v  fo csv  fi  imagename eq cmd exe        findstr  v  Windows  system32  cmd exe        findstr  set  p  r           do           set pid   a         set Line   b         set Line  Line  r            set Line  Line   -2                   taskkill  pid  pid     gt nul   goto  HIEnd      HInput   SetLocal DisableDelayedExpansion   title Password   mode con lines 2 cols 30  Echo Enter your Code      Set  Line      For  F     In        Prompt  H amp For     in  1  Do Rem        Do Set  BS          HILoop    Set  Key      For  F  delims       In       Xcopy  W    f0     f0  2  gt Nul       Do If Not Defined Key Set  Key         Set  Key  Key  -1      SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion    If Not Defined Key start  min cmd  k mode con lines 1 cols 14   amp set p  r  Line   amp exit   If  BS     Key   Set  P    BS   BS    lt Nul    Set  Key      If Defined Line Set  Line  Line  0 -1        Else Set  P       lt Nul    If Not Defined Line  EndLocal  amp Set  Line  Key        Else For  F delims    eol       In        Line    Do EndLocal  amp Set  Line     Key     Goto  HILoop     HIEnd    Echo  Echo Your code is      Line      Pause    Goto  Eof

User · Answer

Ok so I just found a really decent work around to this issue  CMDKEY works on windows 7  and allows you to enter details into the windows cred manager from the cmd prompt  and if you use the  pass switch it provides its own password entry without exposing the password  It does not present       as you type but the password is hidden  The script below requests the username as normal and creates a var called  quot  username  quot  it then checks to see if the cred manager already has an entry for the target server  If it does it just maps the drive to the usename and does not request a password  If there is no entry it then uses the CMDKEY to prompt for password and stores it in cred manager      set  p username  quot Enter School Username   quot      CMDKEY  list SERVERNAME   FIND  quot NONE quot   gt  nul 2 gt  amp 1     IF  ERRORLEVEL  NEQ 0 GOTO MAPDRIVES     CMDKEY  ADD SERVERNAME  username  username   pass      MAPDRIVES     NET USE Y    SERVERNAME SHARE  username

User · Answer

Up to XP and Server 2003  you can make use of another included tool  VBScript  - the following two scripts do the job you want   First  getpwd cmd    echo off  lt nul  set  p passwd Password   for  f  delims     i in   cscript  nologo getpwd vbs   do set passwd   i echo    Then  getpwd vbs   Set oScriptPW   CreateObject  ScriptPW Password   strPassword   oScriptPW GetPassword   Wscript StdOut WriteLine strPassword   The getpwd vbs simply uses the password object to input the password from the user and then print it to standard output  the next paragraph will explain why that doesn t show up in the terminal    The getpwd cmd command script is a bit trickier but it basically works as follows   The effect of the   lt nul  set  p passwd Password    command is to output the prompt with no trailing newline character - it s a sneaky way to emulate the   echo -n  command from the bash shell  It sets passwd to an empty string as an irrelevant side effect and doesn t wait for input since it s taking its input from the nul  device   The  for  f  delims     i in   cscript  nologo getpwd vbs   do set passwd   i  statement is the trickiest bit  It runs the VBScript with no Microsoft  advertising   so that the only line output is the password  from the VBscript  Wscript StdOut WriteLine strPassword    Setting the delimiters to nothing is required to capture an entire input line with spaces  otherwise you just get the first word  The  for     do set      bit sets passwd to be the actual password output from the VBScript   Then we echo a blank line  to terminate the  Password    line  and the password will be in the passwd environment variable after the code has run     Now  as mentioned  scriptpw dll is available only up to XP 2003  In order to rectify this  you can simply copy the scriptpw dll file from the Windows System32 folder of an XP 2003 system to the Winnt System32 or Windows System32 folder on your own system  Once the DLL has been copied  you will need to register it by running   regsvr32 scriptpw dll   To successfully register the DLL on Vista and later  you will need administrator privileges  I haven t examined the legality of such a move so cave lector     If you re not overly keen on trying to track down and register older DLL files  for convenience or legal reasons   there is another way  Later versions of Windows  the ones that don t have the required DLL  should have Powershell available to you   And  in fact  you really should consider upgrading your scripts to use it fully since it s a much more capable scripting language than cmd exe  However  if you want to keep the bulk of your code as cmd exe scripts  such as if you have a lot of code that you don t want to convert   you can use the same trick   First  modify the cmd script so it calls Powershell rather than CScript    echo off for  f  delims     i in   powershell -file getpwd ps1   do set passwd   i   The Powershell script is equally simple    password   Read-Host  Enter password  -AsSecureString  password    Runtime InteropServices Marshal   SecureStringToBSTR  password   password    Runtime InteropServices Marshal   PtrToStringAuto  password  echo  password   although with some marshalling to get the actual password text   Remember that  to run local unsigned Powershell scripts on your machine  you may need to modify the execution policy from the  draconian  though very safe  default  with something like   set-executionpolicy remotesigned   from within Powershell itself

User · Answer

another alternative is my EditV32  x86  or EditV64  x64  command-line tools  For example   editv32 -m -p  Password    PWD   -m means  masked input  and -p is the prompt  The user s input is stored in the PWD environment variable  You can get it here   https   westmesatech com  page id 19

User · Answer

echo off color 0f MODE CON COLS 132 LINES 50  start cls choice  C ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789      N  CS  M Please enter your password to continue   Valid characters include all letters  numbers  and        Press   to submit   SET ecode  ERRORLEVEL  IF  ecode  EQU 66 goto submit IF  ecode  EQU 1 SET out A IF  ecode  EQU 2 SET out B IF  ecode  EQU 3 SET out C IF  ecode  EQU 4 SET out D IF  ecode  EQU 5 SET out E IF  ecode  EQU 6 SET out F IF  ecode  EQU 7 SET out G IF  ecode  EQU 8 SET out H IF  ecode  EQU 9 SET out I IF  ecode  EQU 10 SET out J IF  ecode  EQU 11 SET out K IF  ecode  EQU 12 SET out L IF  ecode  EQU 13 SET out M IF  ecode  EQU 14 SET out N IF  ecode  EQU 15 SET out O IF  ecode  EQU 16 SET out P IF  ecode  EQU 17 SET out Q IF  ecode  EQU 18 SET out R IF  ecode  EQU 19 SET out S IF  ecode  EQU 20 SET out T IF  ecode  EQU 21 SET out U IF  ecode  EQU 22 SET out V IF  ecode  EQU 23 SET out W IF  ecode  EQU 24 SET out X IF  ecode  EQU 25 SET out Y IF  ecode  EQU 26 SET out Z IF  ecode  EQU 27 SET out a IF  ecode  EQU 28 SET out b IF  ecode  EQU 29 SET out c IF  ecode  EQU 30 SET out d IF  ecode  EQU 31 SET out e IF  ecode  EQU 32 SET out f IF  ecode  EQU 33 SET out g IF  ecode  EQU 34 SET out h IF  ecode  EQU 35 SET out i IF  ecode  EQU 36 SET out j IF  ecode  EQU 37 SET out k IF  ecode  EQU 38 SET out l IF  ecode  EQU 39 SET out m IF  ecode  EQU 40 SET out n IF  ecode  EQU 41 SET out o IF  ecode  EQU 42 SET out p IF  ecode  EQU 43 SET out q IF  ecode  EQU 44 SET out r IF  ecode  EQU 45 SET out s IF  ecode  EQU 46 SET out t IF  ecode  EQU 47 SET out u IF  ecode  EQU 48 SET out v IF  ecode  EQU 49 SET out w IF  ecode  EQU 50 SET out x IF  ecode  EQU 51 SET out y IF  ecode  EQU 52 SET out z IF  ecode  EQU 53 SET out 0 IF  ecode  EQU 54 SET out 1 IF  ecode  EQU 55 SET out 2 IF  ecode  EQU 56 SET out 3 IF  ecode  EQU 57 SET out 4 IF  ecode  EQU 58 SET out 5 IF  ecode  EQU 59 SET out 6 IF  ecode  EQU 60 SET out 7 IF  ecode  EQU 61 SET out 8 IF  ecode  EQU 62 SET out 9 IF  ecode  EQU 63 SET out   IF  ecode  EQU 64 SET out   IF  ecode  EQU 65 SET out   SET code  out  SET show    loop cls choice  C ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789      N  CS  M Please enter your password to continue   Valid characters include all letters  numbers  and        Press   to submit   code  SET ecode  ERRORLEVEL  IF  ecode  EQU 66 goto submit IF  ecode  EQU 1 SET out A IF  ecode  EQU 2 SET out B IF  ecode  EQU 3 SET out C IF  ecode  EQU 4 SET out D IF  ecode  EQU 5 SET out E IF  ecode  EQU 6 SET out F IF  ecode  EQU 7 SET out G IF  ecode  EQU 8 SET out H IF  ecode  EQU 9 SET out I IF  ecode  EQU 10 SET out J IF  ecode  EQU 11 SET out K IF  ecode  EQU 12 SET out L IF  ecode  EQU 13 SET out M IF  ecode  EQU 14 SET out N IF  ecode  EQU 15 SET out O IF  ecode  EQU 16 SET out P IF  ecode  EQU 17 SET out Q IF  ecode  EQU 18 SET out R IF  ecode  EQU 19 SET out S IF  ecode  EQU 20 SET out T IF  ecode  EQU 21 SET out U IF  ecode  EQU 22 SET out V IF  ecode  EQU 23 SET out W IF  ecode  EQU 24 SET out X IF  ecode  EQU 25 SET out Y IF  ecode  EQU 26 SET out Z IF  ecode  EQU 27 SET out a IF  ecode  EQU 28 SET out b IF  ecode  EQU 29 SET out c IF  ecode  EQU 30 SET out d IF  ecode  EQU 31 SET out e IF  ecode  EQU 32 SET out f IF  ecode  EQU 33 SET out g IF  ecode  EQU 34 SET out h IF  ecode  EQU 35 SET out i IF  ecode  EQU 36 SET out j IF  ecode  EQU 37 SET out k IF  ecode  EQU 38 SET out l IF  ecode  EQU 39 SET out m IF  ecode  EQU 40 SET out n IF  ecode  EQU 41 SET out o IF  ecode  EQU 42 SET out p IF  ecode  EQU 43 SET out q IF  ecode  EQU 44 SET out r IF  ecode  EQU 45 SET out s IF  ecode  EQU 46 SET out t IF  ecode  EQU 47 SET out u IF  ecode  EQU 48 SET out v IF  ecode  EQU 49 SET out w IF  ecode  EQU 50 SET out x IF  ecode  EQU 51 SET out y IF  ecode  EQU 52 SET out z IF  ecode  EQU 53 SET out 0 IF  ecode  EQU 54 SET out 1 IF  ecode  EQU 55 SET out 2 IF  ecode  EQU 56 SET out 3 IF  ecode  EQU 57 SET out 4 IF  ecode  EQU 58 SET out 5 IF  ecode  EQU 59 SET out 6 IF  ecode  EQU 60 SET out 7 IF  ecode  EQU 61 SET out 8 IF  ecode  EQU 62 SET out 9 IF  ecode  EQU 63 SET out   IF  ecode  EQU 64 SET out   IF  ecode  EQU 65 SET out   SET code  code  out  SET show  show   goto loop  submit cls SET password  code  IF  password  EQU 0cZrocks  SET result 1 IF ELSE SET result 2 IF  result  EQU 1 echo password correct IF  result  EQU 2 echo password incorrect timeout  T 2  NOBREAK  gt nul cls IF  result  EQU 1 goto end IF ELSE goto start  end

User · Answer

I used Blorgbeard s above solution which is actually great in my opinion  Then I enhanced it as follows    Google for ansicon Download zip file and sample text file  Install  that means copy 2 files into system32    Use it like this    echo off ansicon -p set  p pwd Password ESC 0 37 47m echo ESC 0m   This switches the console to gray on gray for your password entry and switches back when you are done  The ESC should actually be an unprintable character  which you can copy over from the downloaded sample text file  appears like a left-arrow in Notepad  into your batch file  You can use the sample text file to find the codes for all color combinations   If you are not admin of the machine  you will probably be able to install the files in a non-system directory  then you have to append the directory to the PATH in your script before calling the program and using the escape sequences  This could even be the current directory probably  if you need a non-admin distributable package of just a few files

User · Answer

You may use ReadFormattedLine subroutine for all kind of formatted input  For example  the command below read a password of 8 characters  display asterisks in the screen  and continue automatically with no need to press Enter   call  ReadFormattedLine password             M  Enter password  8 chars       This subroutine is written in pure Batch so it does not require any additional program  and it allows several formatted input operations  like read just numbers  convert letters to uppercase  etc  You may download ReadFormattedLine subroutine from Read a line with specific format     EDIT 2018-08-18  New method to enter an  invisible  password  The FINDSTR command have a strange bug that happen when this command is used to show characters in color AND the output of such a command is redirected to CON device  For details on how use FINDSTR command to show text in color  see this topic   When the output of this form of FINDSTR command is redirected to CON  something strange happens after the text is output in the desired color  all the text after it is output as  invisible  characters  although a more precise description is that the text is output as black text over black background  The original text will appear if you use COLOR command to reset the foreground and background colors of the entire screen  However  when the text is  invisible  we could execute a SET  P command  so all characters entered will not appear on the screen    echo off setlocal  set  P       lt  NUL  gt   Enter password  findstr  A 1E  V       Enter password  NUL  gt  CON del  Enter password  set  P  password   cls color 07 echo The password read is    password

[batch-file] Can I mask an input text in a bat file?

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