Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

User::pwent

use User::pwent;                 # Default overrides built-ins only.
$pw = getpwnam("daemon")   or die "No daemon user";
if ($pw->uid == 1 && $pw->dir =~ m#^/(bin|tmp)?$# ) {
    print "gid 1 on root dir";
}

$pw = getpw($whoever);           # Accepts both string or number.
$real_shell = $pw->shell || '/bin/sh';
for (($fullname, $office, $workphone, $homephone) =
       split /\s*,\s*/, $pw->gecos)
{
   s/&/ucfirst(lc($pw->name))/ge;
}

use User::pwent qw(:FIELDS);     # Sets globals in current package.
getpwnam("daemon")         or die "No daemon user";
if ($pw_uid == 1 && $pw_dir =~ m#^/(bin|tmp)?$# ) {
    print "gid 1 on root dir";
}

use User::pwent qw/pw_has/;
if (pw_has(qw[gecos expire quota])) { …. }
if (pw_has("name uid gid passwd"))  { …. }
printf "Your struct pwd supports [%s]\n", scalar pw_has();

By default, this module's exports override the core getpwent, getpwuid, and getpwnam functions, replacing them with versions that return a User::pwent object (or undef on failure). It is often better to use the module than the core functions it replaces, because the built-ins overload or even omit various slots in the return list in the name of backward compatibility.

The returned object has methods that access the similarly named structure field name from the C's passwd structure from pwd.h, stripped of their leading "pw_" parts, namely name, passwd, uid, gid, change, age, quota, comment, class, gecos, dir, shell, and expire. The passwd, gecos, and shell fields are tainted. You may also import the structure fields into your ...