How do I echo stars (*) when reading password with `read`?

As Mark Rushakoff pointed out, read -s will suppress the echoing of characters typed at the prompt. You can make use of that feature as part of this script to echo asterisks for each character typed:

#!/bin/bashunset passwordprompt="Enter Password:"while IFS= read -p "$prompt" -r -s -n 1 chardo    if [[ $char == $'\0' ]]    then        break    fi    prompt='*'    password+="$char"doneechoecho "Done. Password=$password"

I really liked the answer that Wirone gave, but I didn't like that the backspacing would continue removing characters even back into the "Enter password: " prompt.

I also had some issues where pressing keys too rapidly would cause some of the characters to actually print on the screen... never a good thing when prompting for a password. =)

The following is my modified version of Wirone's answer which addresses these issues:

#!/bin/bashunset PASSWORDunset CHARCOUNTecho -n "Enter password: "stty -echoCHARCOUNT=0while IFS= read -p "$PROMPT" -r -s -n 1 CHARdo    # Enter - accept password    if [[ $CHAR == $'\0' ]] ; then        break    fi    # Backspace    if [[ $CHAR == $'\177' ]] ; then        if [ $CHARCOUNT -gt 0 ] ; then            CHARCOUNT=$((CHARCOUNT-1))            PROMPT=$'\b \b'            PASSWORD="${PASSWORD%?}"        else            PROMPT=''        fi    else        CHARCOUNT=$((CHARCOUNT+1))        PROMPT='*'        PASSWORD+="$CHAR"    fidonestty echoecho $PASSWORD

read -s should put it in silent mode:

-s     Silent mode.  If input is coming from a terminal, characters are not echoed.

See the read section in man bash.