pwd — The password database¶
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 | 
 | Login name | 
| 1 | 
 | Optional encrypted password | 
| 2 | 
 | Numerical user ID | 
| 3 | 
 | Numerical group ID | 
| 4 | 
 | User name or comment field | 
| 5 | 
 | User home directory | 
| 6 | 
 | 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:
- 
pwd.getpwuid(uid)¶
- Return the password database entry for the given numeric user ID. 
- 
pwd.getpwnam(name)¶
- Return the password database entry for the given user name. 
- 
pwd.getpwall()¶
- Return a list of all available password database entries, in arbitrary order. 
