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.
See also
© 2001–2020 Python Software Foundation
Licensed under the PSF License.
https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/pwd.html