FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT freetds.org>]

On Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:36:21 -0400
"PublicMailbox AT benslade.com" <PublicMailbox AT benslade.com> wrote:

> Upon finding a dash for the password, datacopy would prompt for the
> password and read it in.
> 
> Using a dash for a parameter to specify "read from stdin" is a
> typical style for many Unix/Linux utilities.

A dash is commonly recognized as an alias for standard input, but it's
rarely used for passwords.  And nowadays most systems
support /dev/stdin, freeing the utility from assigning special meaning
to '-'.  

Why not interpolate instead?  To read a password on stdin, something
has to produce it on stdout.  Just insert it at the right  place using
`` or $().  

Before we fully supported Kerberos, I kept passwords in ${HOME}/.netrc,
a file traditionally used by many ftp utilities and  some others,
including fetchmail and wget. For a description of the format, see e.g.
http://man.cx/netrc (4).  

I had a script such as 

        #! /bin/sh
        awk "\$2 == \"$1\" {print \$6}" ~/.netrc 

called "getpass".  Now the command:

  datacopy -S$S/$U/$(getpass $S)/$D/$T ...

does the job.

> Using kerberos might be better, but that's a much harder change.

Not that much harder, and worthwhile if your environment supports it.
Look at what the other db-lib utilities do.  

HTH.  

--jkl