why does getpass() show the input?

[John Salerno]

John Machin wrote:

> Is that meant to be a statement or a question?

Heh heh, sorry! I guess both. Let me clarify:

> (1) what platform you are running on, 

WinXP

>(2) did you enter that at
> the usual OS command line (with/without readline), or in an IDE (e.g
> IDLE) or some other shell (e.g. IPython) 

IDLE

>(3) version numbers of Python
> and any other relevant software 

2.4.3 and nothing else special is running

>(4) Is the question idle curiosity

yes, most of my questions are :)

>(5) have you been molesting your
> console with e.g. stty ...

nope, none of that stuff

> (6) what conclusions you have after reading
> <your_Python_installation_directory>/Lib/getpass.py

if sys.stdin is not sys.__stdin__:
     return default_getpass(prompt)

Ah ha! So it only works at the command prompt, unless I change 
__stdin__? Thanks for teaching me a lesson!