User::pwent (Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition)

8.230. User::pwent

Overrides core getpwent, getpwuid, and getpwnam functions with versions that return User::pwent objects. The object returned has methods with the same names as the structure fields they return. That is, to return the field name, use the name method:

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

The field names (and therefore the method names) are the same as the names of the fields in the passwd structure from the C file pwd.h: name, passwd, uid, gid, quota, comment, gecos, dir, and shell. You can access the fields with the methods or by importing the fields into your namespace with the :FIELDS import tag and prepending pw_ to the method name (for example, pw_name). Exports four functions.

getpw

$pw->getpw(arg)

Frontend that forwards a numeric arg to getpwuid and other args to getpwnam.

getpwent

$pw->getpwent(  )

Successive calls to getpwent return objects representing successive entries from the password table.

getpwnam

$pw->getpwnam(name)

Accesses the password table by user's name.

getpwuid

$pw->getpwuid(uid)

Accesses the password table by user's ID number, uid.