[Info-vax] VMS Features I Wish Linux Had

[Simon Clubley]

On 2016-06-11, Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/10/16 9:17 AM, John E. Malmberg wrote:
>> On 6/9/2016 10:37 PM, lawrencedo99 at gmail.com wrote:
>>>
>>> The other one is the terminal driver. My first impression of Unix
>>> was  what a crap terminal driver it had, that echoes everything as
>>  > soon as it’s typed. Seems like no other system has seen fit to
>>  > emulate the thoughtful VMS feature of not echoing anything until
>>  > it is actually being recognized as input to a program.
>>
>> Which can let text not intended to be echoed like passwords leak to the
>> terminal output.
>>
>
> Unix (and thus Linux) has built in method that prevents things like
> passwords from echoing.
>

John wasn't talking about what happens when you start typing after the
password read I/O has been queued. He was talking about what happens
if you start typing before that and he is quite correct - text which
should not be echoed _does_ get echoed.

> Once again people pointing out non-existant weaknesses in Unix.  I
> wish people would take the time to actually learn about it before
> trying to criticize it.
>

I criticise things in Unix (and VMS for that matter) precisely because
I _do_ understand them.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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