retrieve plaintext password from file using bash command

Question

I want to read a value from a known file.

File is located at /root/.my.cnf and contains

[client]
password='PosftGlK2y'

I would like to return PosftGlK2y - ideally using a simple one liner command.

I have tried

cat /root/.my.cnf | grep password

which returns password='PosftGlK2y'

I am sure there is a better way.

You don't need to use cat -- grep could read the file. That's call UUoC (Useless Use of cat). — Jonathan Leffler
– Jonathan Leffler, Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 0:26
To parse anything sophisticated enough, you probably don't want to reinvent the wheels but instead get a decent INI parser. — 4ae1e1
– 4ae1e1, Commented Jun 9, 2015 at 0:27

merlin2011 · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-09 00:30:17Z

2

You can skip the cat and grep directly, and then pipe to awk with a ' delimiter.

grep password /root/.my.cnf | awk -F"'" '{print $2}'

Alternately, you can skip the grep altogether and just use awk to do the search and the extraction.

awk -F"'" '/^password=/{print $2}' /root/.my.cnf

answered Jun 9, 2015 at 0:26

merlin2011

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7 Comments

@CharlesDuffy, Sure, I'll add that in.

awk -F"'" ' /^password=/{print $2}' </root/.my.cnf

And the selection might be better anchored to the start of the line and followed by an =, so you might have awk '/^password=/ { ... }'

...of course, it's an issue if the file happens not to be written with single quotes.

This also will match any comments in the file containing the word "password", as currently written.

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mwakerman · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-09 00:35:22Z

1

You could use cut to split the line on the ' character:

grep password= /root/.my.cnf | cut -d "'" -f 2

returns

PosftGlK2y

The cut command splits a line on the delimiter (-d flag) and returns the column(s) specified by the f flag.

answered Jun 9, 2015 at 0:35

mwakerman

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