title: How to get a password from a shell script without echoing
body: <p>I have a script that automates a process that needs access to a password protected system. The system is accessed via a command-line program that accepts the user password as an argument.</p>
  
  <p>I would like to prompt the user to type in their password, assign it to a shell variable, and then use that variable to construct the command line of the accessing program (which will of course produce stream output that I will process).  </p>
  
  <p>I am a reasonably competent shell programmer in Bourne/Bash, but I don't know how to accept the user input without having it echo to the terminal (or maybe having it echoed using '*' characters).  </p>
  
  <p>Can anyone help with this?</p>