File: getpwent.3

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.\" Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)
.\"
.\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
.\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
.\" preserved on all copies.
.\"
.\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
.\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
.\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
.\" permission notice identical to this one.
.\" 
.\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
.\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date.  The author(s) assume no
.\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
.\" the use of the information contained herein.  The author(s) may not
.\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
.\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
.\" professionally.
.\" 
.\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
.\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
.\"
.\" References consulted:
.\"     Linux libc source code
.\"     Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)
.\"     386BSD man pages
.\"
.\" Modified Sat Jul 24 19:22:14 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
.\" Modified Mon May 27 21:37:47 1996 by Martin Schulze <joey@linux.de>
.\" Modified Thu Dec 13 21:10:55 2001 by Martin Schulze <joey@infodrom.org>
.\"
.TH GETPWENT 3  1996-05-27 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
getpwent, setpwent, endpwent \- get password file entry
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <sys/types.h>
.B #include <pwd.h>
.sp
.B struct passwd *getpwent(void);
.sp
.B void setpwent(void);
.sp
.B void endpwent(void);
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The \fBgetpwent()\fP function returns a pointer to a structure containing
.\" Next line rejected upstream
broken out fields of a line from \fI/etc/passwd\fP.  The first time it 
is called it returns the first entry; thereafter, it returns successive 
entries.
.PP
The \fBsetpwent()\fP function rewinds the file pointer to the beginning 
of the \fI/etc/passwd\fP file.
.PP
The \fBendpwent()\fP function closes the \fI/etc/passwd\fP file.
.PP
The \fIpasswd\fP structure is defined in \fI<pwd.h>\fP as follows:
.sp
.RS
.nf
struct passwd {
      char    *pw_name;      /* user name */
      char    *pw_passwd;    /* user password */
      uid_t   pw_uid;        /* user id */
      gid_t   pw_gid;        /* group id */
      char    *pw_gecos;     /* real name */
      char    *pw_dir;       /* home directory */
      char    *pw_shell;     /* shell program */
};
.fi
.RE
.\" Next paragraph rejected upstream
.PP
When
.BR shadow (5)
passwords are enabled (which is default on many GNU/Linux
installations) the content of
.I pw_passwd
is usually not very useful.  In such a case most passwords are stored
in a separate file.
.PP
The variable
.I pw_shell
may be empty, in which case the system will execute the default shell
.RB ( /bin/sh )
for the user.
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
The \fBgetpwent()\fP function returns the \fIpasswd\fP structure, or NULL if 
there are no more entries or an error occured.
.SH ERRORS
.TP
.B ENOMEM
Insufficient memory to allocate passwd structure.
.SH FILES
.TP
.I /etc/passwd
password database file
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
SVID 3, BSD 4.3
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR fgetpwent (3),
.BR getpw (3),
.BR getpwent_r (3),
.BR getpwnam (3),
.BR getpwuid (3),
.BR putpwent (3),
.\" Next line rejected upstream
.BR shadow (5),
.BR passwd (5)