[TAG] Invisible Read!!

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 01:28:55PM +0100, Neil Youngman wrote:
> On or around Thursday 31 August 2006 13:17, Benjamin A. Okopnik reorganised a 
> bunch of electrons to form the message:
> > On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 03:46:48AM +0530, Vikas Mohan wrote:
> > > Sir,
> > >              iam trying to emulate a login session.
> > >
> > >              login:<some login>
> > > NOTE----------------------->password:<the text typed here should not be
> > > visible> how to do this with shell script BASH.
> > >
> > > Please this is my assignment and iam a student.
> >
> > It is indeed *your* assignment, and you *are* a student.
> >
> > That being the case, why aren't *you* *studying*? The idea of going to
> > school is for you to gain knowledge; when you try to cheat instead of
> > actually studying, you waste money, time, and effort - and that includes
> > other people's as well as your own.
> 
> Ben, maybe a small credit is due for honesty here? Or am I being too nice?

You _are_ a nice guy, Neil; me, well, I'm afraid that I see no redeeming
qualities in his request. Instead, I see either 1) a student going down
a bad path, or 2) a proto-skript-kiddie who wants to learn how to fake a
login session in order to steal login info. He clearly knows that it's
all about Bash - but just as clearly, he hasn't troubled himself to look
it up (a Net search with the keywords he used in his email is quite
instructive, BTW.)

I'm always happy to help someone with a real question - students
included - but basic stuff like this, where the OP just has to lift a
hand? Nope, no credit from me.
 
> > Go study, Vikas Mohan from chintech.org [1]. I hope that your professor
> > reads Linux Gazette and gives you a poor grade in this class for
> > attempting to cheat; perhaps that will turn out to be the most valuable
> > part of your current education.
> 
> Vikas
> 
> We don't do people's homework here, but we do occasionally point them in the 
> right direction. May I suggest that you read the man page for bash, 
> specifically the part relating to the "read" builtin command and it's 
> options. (RTFM  is good advice in these situations)

There are a bunch of routes to getting the necessary information; heck,
a net search alone turns up thousands of hits. My diagnosis is acute
grade-chasing, severely exacerbated by a laziness infection.


* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *