The termios module

(Unix only, Optional). This module provides an interface to the Unix terminal control facilities. It can be used to control most aspects of the terminal communication ports.

In the following example, this module is used to temporarily disable keyboard echo (which is controlled by the ECHO flag in the third flag field):

Example: Using the termios module to disable keyboard echo

# File: termios-example-1.py

import termios, TERMIOS
import sys

fileno = sys.stdin.fileno()

attr = termios.tcgetattr(fileno)
orig = attr[:]

print "attr =>", attr[:4] # flags

# disable echo flag
attr[3] = attr[3] & ~TERMIOS.ECHO

try:
    termios.tcsetattr(fileno, TERMIOS.TCSADRAIN, attr)
    message = raw_input("enter secret message: ")
    print
finally:
    # restore terminal settings
    termios.tcsetattr(fileno, TERMIOS.TCSADRAIN, orig)

print "secret =>", repr(message)

attr => [1280, 5, 189, 35387]
enter secret message:
secret => 'and now for something completely different'