16.2 pwd -- The password database

16.2 `pwd` -- The password database

Availability: Unix.

This module provides access to the Unix user account and password database. It is available on all Unix versions.

Password database entries are reported as a tuple-like object, whose attributes correspond to the members of the passwd structure (Attribute field below, see <pwd.h>):

Index	Attribute	Meaning
0	`pw_name`	Login name
1	`pw_passwd`	Optional encrypted password
2	`pw_uid`	Numerical user ID
3	`pw_gid`	Numerical group ID
4	`pw_gecos`	User name or comment field
5	`pw_dir`	User home directory
6	`pw_shell`	User command interpreter

The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings. KeyError is raised if the entry asked for cannot be found.

Note: In traditional Unix the field pw_passwd usually contains a password encrypted with a DES derived algorithm (see module crypt). However most modern unices use a so-called shadow password system. On those unices the pw_passwd field only contains an asterisk ('*') or the letter "x" where the encrypted password is stored in a file /etc/shadow which is not world readable. Whether the pw_passwd field contains anything useful is system-dependent. If available, the spwd module should be used where access to the encrypted password is required.

It defines the following items:

getpwuid( uid): Return the password database entry for the given numeric user ID.

getpwnam( name): Return the password database entry for the given user name.

getpwall( ): Return a list of all available password database entries, in arbitrary order.