Way to securely give a password to R application from the terminal?

Question

Does R have a function that allows a user to provide a password securely, such as Python's getpass module?

(see http://docs.python.org/library/getpass.html for an example of what I mean)

Answer 1

The problem is that R does not have functions to control the terminal it is running in (something like Rncurses); probably this is due to portability issues.
Some time ago I was struggling with the same problem and I ended up with a function using TclTk:

getPass<-function(){     require(tcltk);     wnd<-tktoplevel();tclVar("")->passVar;     #Label     tkgrid(tklabel(wnd,text="Enter password:"));     #Password box     tkgrid(tkentry(wnd,textvariable=passVar,show="*")->passBox);     #Hitting return will also submit password     tkbind(passBox,"<Return>",function() tkdestroy(wnd));     #OK button     tkgrid(tkbutton(wnd,text="OK",command=function() tkdestroy(wnd)));     #Wait for user to click OK     tkwait.window(wnd);     password<-tclvalue(passVar);     return(password);   }   

Of course it won't work in non-GUI environments.

Answer 2

Very simple linux concept for terminal secure password question:

   password <- function(prompt = "Password:"){       cat(prompt)       pass <- system('stty -echo && read ff && stty echo && echo $ff && ff=""',                         intern=TRUE)       cat('\n')       invisible(pass)    }