Can _netrc handle passphrases with spaces?

Question

The following configuration works:

machine code.mycompany.net
login supernerd
password HelloW0rld

The following configuration doesn't work:

machine code.mycompany.net
login supernerd
password Please excuse my dear aunt sally.

@runrig And how to store a password with a space and a quote? — ceving, Nov 09 '20 at 19:50
@ceving the only problem would be if the password had both single and double quotes. — runrig, Jan 07 '21 at 19:29

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:43

5

From this bug report or this page, spaces in password don't seem to be supported in a .netrc (or _netrc) file.
Or even if they are, not all the programs using that .netrc file will be able to interpret said space correctly.

As runrig mentions in the comments:

Quoting the field as in another answer here should work, but the python library doesn't like it.
But, e.g., command line ftp and the perl netrc library is fine with it.

So this should work when used when those commands:

password "Please excuse my dear aunt sally."

edited May 23 '17 at 11:43

Community

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answered Oct 01 '12 at 14:25

VonC

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The man page doesn't mention spaces when used that way in a netrc file: http://linux.die.net/man/5/netrc – VonC Oct 01 '12 at 14:27
The python netrc library doesn't support spaces, but should. It's a bug in the library. Quoting the field as in another answer here should work, but the python library doesn't like it. But, e.g., command line ftp and the perl netrc library is fine with it. – runrig Feb 27 '15 at 18:10

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 28 '13 at 09:56

4

Using ftp on IRIX 6.5 running on an SGI, I added quotes around my password and it works fine, e.g.:

password "Please excuse my dear aunt sally."

edited Dec 28 '13 at 09:56

Stephen Ostermiller

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answered Nov 01 '12 at 16:12

Jim

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git (v1.9.5) does not understand quoted passwords containing spaces. – EBlake Jul 06 '16 at 12:22

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 17 '21 at 05:28

I have studied wget's netrc.c; I hope most netrc parsers work similarly:

Note that # after whitespace starts a comment until end of line.

A string can be put between double quotes (for example if the string starts with #, or contains a lot of whitespace that we don't want to backslash).

"#pass%"
"S3cret with spaces"

To make sure a character is understood as part of a string, prefix it with a backslash so that it is understood verbatim. This is supported with or without double quotes:

S3cret\ with\ spaces
\#not-a-comment
backslash:\\
"anything"
"double\"quote"

Can _netrc handle passphrases with spaces?

3 Answers3