Skip to Main Content
Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition
book

Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

by Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour
June 2002
Beginner content levelBeginner
759 pages
80h 42m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

getpwent

Synopsis

getpwent

Retrieves the next line from the /etc/passwd file (or its equivalent coming from another server). Returns null at the end of the file. The return value in list context is:

($name,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$quota,$comment,$gcos,$dir,$shell)

Some machines may use the quota and comment fields for other purposes, but the remaining fields will always be the same. To set up a hash for translating login names to uids, do this:

while (($name, $passwd, $uid) = getpwent) {
    $uid{$name} = $uid;
}

In scalar context, getpwent returns only the username.

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Perl by Example, Fourth Edition

Perl by Example, Fourth Edition

Ellie Quigley
Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington
Perl in a Nutshell

Perl in a Nutshell

Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour
Learning Perl, 7th Edition

Learning Perl, 7th Edition

Randal L. Schwartz, brian d foy, Tom Phoenix

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596002416Errata Page