How to Enable Password Mask in Editbox?

User Authentication is common in windows application. Usually the password editbox is masked and won’t show the real password. But to to enable the password masking in Editbox?

Picture Courtesy – NoteBookForums.

You have to enable ES_PASSWORD style of editbox and have to call SetPasswordChar() to set the Password masking character. You can do it in CDialog::OnInitDialog(). See the code snippet below.

BOOL CRabbitDlg::OnInitDialog()
{
    ...

    // Get the Edit by using CtrlID.
    CEdit* pEdit = (CEdit*) GetDlgItem( IDC_EDIT_PASSWORD );

    // Set the password char.
    pEdit->SetPasswordChar( '*' );

    // Now modify the style to enable ES_PASSWORD.
    pEdit->ModifyStyle( 0, ES_PASSWORD );

    return TRUE;
}

Unless I’m very mistaken, it was while setting up samba server in Linux, where i had an interesting incident related to password. I was asked to type the password and save it. When I took the dialog again, the displayed password length was different. I was confused. I retyped and saved it again and again. Very lately i came to know that its a trick to fool the people who try to guess the password by length.

Targeted Audience – Beginners.