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35.2. pwd — The password database
Platforms: Unix
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 | pw_name | Login name |
| 1 | pw_passwd | Optional encrypted password |
| 2 | pw_uid | Numerical user ID |
| 3 | pw_gid | Numerical group ID |
| 4 | pw_gecos | User name or comment field |
| 5 | pw_dir | User home directory |
| 6 | pw_shell | 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.