Get rid of the initial asterisk when using PasswordField masking in console

Question

Hi!
How can I get rid of the initial astrerisk when using the PasswordField script from Sun?
I've tried to check whether the BufferedReader is empty or not, but with no succes.
Here comes the code:
PasswordField.java
import java.io.*;
public class PasswordField {
    *@param prompt The prompt to display to the user
    *@return The password as entered by the user
   public static String readPassword (String prompt) {
      EraserThread et = new EraserThread(prompt);
      Thread mask = new Thread(et);
      mask.start();
      BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
      String password = "";
      try {
         password = in.readLine();
      } catch (IOException ioe) {
        ioe.printStackTrace();
      // stop masking
      et.stopMasking();
      // return the password entered by the user
      return password;
}EraserThread
import java.io.*;
class EraserThread implements Runnable {
   private boolean stop;
    *@param The prompt displayed to the user
   public EraserThread(String prompt) {
       System.out.print(prompt);
    * Begin masking...display asterisks (*)
   public void run () {
      stop = true;
      while (stop) {
         System.out.print("\010*");
      try {
         Thread.currentThread().sleep(1);
         } catch(InterruptedException ie) {
            ie.printStackTrace();
    * Instruct the thread to stop masking
   public void stopMasking() {
      this.stop = false;
}

Answer 1

Hello Yajai,
The example program will use the default value for timeout, 10 seconds. To change this, you will have to set the Stream.Timeout value. I inserted this function into the example and set it equal to -1, and the program will wait indefinitely for the trigger signal without timing out. Please see the attached image to how this was implemented.
I hope this help. Let me know if you have any further questions.
Regards,
Sean C.
Attachments:
SetTimeout.bmp ‏2305 KB