Re: RFE: Echo dots option for 'read -s'

Chet Ramey <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.shells.bash.bugs
Organization ITS, Case Western Reserve University
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On 12/21/25 4:23 PM, Bruce Jerrick wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12/19/25 07:12, Chet Ramey wrote:
> ...
>> Doesn't this seem like incredible overkill for something that is rarely
>> requested and would be rarely used?
>>
> 
> Two points:
> 
> 1. It may be rarely requested just because users don't bother to ask.

Maybe. There's no way to know; this is an unprovable statement.

> 2. Even if it seems like overkill, the patch is already done.

Just because a patch is `done' doesn't mean that it's needed or useful.
It may be the case that a patch is not maintainable, or doesn't integrate
well with the rest of the code, doesn't use the existing coding style,
or employs a jarring, incompatible way of doing things (string options
prefixed with a colon?). Writing the code is often the part of that code's
life cycle that takes the least amount of time.

>     I don't think it would "rarely" be used. 

Sure, you'd use it.

>  It would be a good thing to have when reading a password.

Opinions on this are mixed, at best.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    [email protected]    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
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