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Manual Reference Pages  - GETPWENT (3)

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getpwent, setpwent, endpwent - get password file entry

CONTENTS

Synopsis
Description
Errors
Files

#include <sys/types.h> 

#include <pwd.h> 



struct passwd *getpwent(void); 



void setpwent(void); 



void endpwent(void); 

The getpwent() function returns a pointer to a structure containing the broken out fields of a line from /etc/passwd. The first time it is called it returns the first entry; thereafter, it returns successive entries.

The setpwent() function rewinds the file pointer to the beginning of the /etc/passwd file.

The endpwent() function closes the /etc/passwd file.

The passwd structure is defined in <pwd.h> as follows:

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 */
};

The getpwent() function returns the passwd structure, or NULL if there are no more entries or an error occurs.

ENOMEM	Insufficient memory to allocate passwd structure.

/etc/passwd
	password database file

SVID 3, BSD 4.3

fgetpwent(3), getpwent_r(3), getpwnam(3), getpwuid(3), getpw(3), putpwent(3), passwd(5)

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