Storing passwords while keeping the integrity of getch()

Whats an easy way I can store the password the user inputs while still keeping the password hidden?

  char password[9];
   int i;
   printf("Ent开发者_C百科er your password: ");
   for (i=0;i<9;i++)
   {
   password[i] = getch();
   printf("*");
   }
   for (i=0;i<9;i++)
   printf("%c",password[i]);
   getch();
   }

I wanna store the password so I can do a simple if (password[i] == root_password) so the proper password continues on.

---

Your problem appears to be that you're not checking for newline '\n' nor end-of-file.

printf("Enter your password: ");
char password[9];
int i;
for (i = 0; i < sizeof password - 1; i++)
{
    int c = getch();
    if (c == '\n' || c == EOF)
        break;
    }
    password[i] = c;
    printf("*");
}
password[i] = '\0';

This way, password will end up being an ASCIIZ string, suitable for printing with puts, printf("%s", password), or - crucially...

if (strcmp(password, root_password)) == 0)
    your_wish_is_my_command();

Note that we read at most 8 characters into the password as we need one extra character for the NUL terminator. You could increase that if you wanted.

---

You need to use the console API in Windows. Below is a snippet that disables echoing in the console window. The function SetConsoleMode() is used to control the echoing (among other things). I save the old mode, so that I can restore the console once the password has been retrieved.

Also, the *ConsoleMode() functions need a handle to the console input buffer. How you can get a handle to these buffers is described in the MSDN documentation of CreateFile().

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    char password[100] = { 0 };
    printf("Enter your password: ");

    HANDLE hConsole = ::CreateFile("CONIN$", GENERIC_WRITE | GENERIC_READ, FILE_SHARE_READ, 0, OPEN_EXISTING, 0, 0);

    DWORD dwOldMode;
    ::GetConsoleMode(hConsole, &dwOldMode);
    ::SetConsoleMode(hConsole, dwOldMode & ~ENABLE_ECHO_INPUT);

    bool bFinished = false;
    while(!bFinished) {
        if(!fgets(password, sizeof(password) / sizeof(password[0]) - 1, stdin)) {
            printf("\nEOF - exiting\n");
        } else
            bFinished = true;
    }

    ::SetConsoleMode(hConsole, dwOldMode | ENABLE_ECHO_INPUT);
    printf("\nPassword is: %s\n", password);

    return 0;
}

---

Since we are in C++ and Windows do this:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <conio.h> //_getch
#include <Windows.h> //VK_RETURN = 0x0D

using namespace std;

string read_password()
{
    string pass;
    cout << "Enter your password: ";

    int character = 0;
    while(VK_RETURN != (character = _getch()) )
    {
        cout << '*';
        pass += static_cast<char>(character);
    }

    cout << std::endl;
    return pass;
}

int main ()
{
    string root_password = "anypass123";
    string pass = read_password();

    if (pass == root_password)
    {
        cout << "password accepted" << endl;
    }

    return 0;
}

compiled & tested