What would be the concept behind the password not being echoed on cli

Question

I am curious to know why the password characters(special characters) are not echoed when we login to the system via a terminal.

But we can see the password characters(special characters) while we login to the system via GUI.

The only reason i can think of is that the total number of characters in my password wouldn't be revealed to someone who's spying over my system/password.

Any suggestions/ides?

Answer 1

One possible explanation is that command line logins have been around for much longer than GUIs. I think the dots that replace characters are a relatively new idea that have been implemented in GUIs. On the command line, however, nothing was originally shown and it has stayed this way over the years.