whither 1.00's "passwd -p ..." ?

[Jim Freeman]

busybox 1.00 (and other versions?) had a "-p" option to allow setting
a user's password bypassing the interactive mode

	# passwd fu
	Changing password for fu
	New password:
	Retype password:
	Password for fu changed by root

vs.
	# passwd -p **** blip
	Setting password for blip
	Password changed.


My CGI backends to do remote management on an embedded machine have
been using this, but it now fails with current busybox, and no
shell trickery I can conjure (echo/pipe, HERE doc ...) works,
and nothing expect-ish is available to work with on the box.

For now I kludge around the lack by emulating the example at
http://www.unixguide.net/unix/faq/3.9.shtml (substituting
"ptyget" for "pty").

Aside from the /proc/.../cmdline (and other?) security concerns
(largely moot for many embedded scenarios), is there a reason
this functionality has been removed?

Anyone clued in to the reasoning/history of this change (didn't see
anything on the lists)?  Any hope for it's restoration?

Thanks,
...jfree