Hide password input on terminal

Question

I want to mask my password while writing it with *. I use Linux GCC for this code. I know one solution is to use getch() function like this

Answer 1

man getpass

This function is obsolete. Do not use it. If you want to read input without terminal echoing enabled, see the description of the ECHO flag in termios(3)

# include 
# include    /* needed for STDIN_FILENO which is an int file descriptor */

struct termios tp, save;

tcgetattr( STDIN_FILENO, &tp);              /* get existing terminal properties */
save = tp;                                  /* save existing terminal properties */

tp.c_lflag &= ~ECHO;                        /* only cause terminal echo off */

tcsetattr( STDIN_FILENO, TCSAFLUSH, &tp );  /* set terminal settings */

/*
   now input by user in terminal will not be displayed
   and cursor will not move
*/

tcsetattr( STDIN_FILENO, TCSANOW, &save);   /* restore original terminal settings */

If you notice, most current linux distro's do not mask a password with asterisks. Doing so divulges the length of the password which is no way beneficial. It is easier and better to simply make the cursor not move when a password is typed in. If for whatever reason you require a * to be printed for every character that's typed then you would have to grab every keypress before Enter is hit and that's always been problematic.