The pwd Module

(Unix only) The pwd module provides an interface to the Unix password "database" (/etc/passwd and friends). This database (usually a plain-text file) contains information about the user accounts on the local machine. Example 12-2 demonstrates pwd.

Example 12-2. Using the pwd Module

File: pwd-example-1.py import pwd import os print pwd.getpwuid(os.getgid()) print pwd.getpwnam("root") ('effbot', 'dsWjk8', 4711, 4711, 'eff-bot', '/home/effbot', '/bin/bosh') ('root', 'hs2giiw', 0, 0, 'root', '/root', '/bin/bash')

The getpwall function returns a list of database entries for all available users. This can be useful if you want to search for a user.

If you have to look up many names, you can use getpwall to preload a dictionary, as shown in Example 12-3.

Example 12-3. Using the pwd Module

File: pwd-example-2.py import pwd import os # preload password dictionary _pwd = {} for info in pwd.getpwall(): _pwd[info[0]] = _pwd[info[2]] = info def userinfo(uid): # name or uid integer return _pwd[uid] print userinfo(os.getuid()) print userinfo("root") ('effbot', 'dsWjk8', 4711, 4711, 'eff-bot', '/home/effbot', '/bin/bosh') ('root', 'hs2giiw', 0, 0, 'root', '/root', '/bin/bash')