1 .\" Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)
3 .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
4 .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
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7 .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
8 .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
9 .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
10 .\" permission notice identical to this one.
12 .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
13 .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
14 .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
15 .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
16 .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
17 .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
20 .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
21 .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
23 .\" References consulted:
24 .\" Linux libc source code
25 .\" Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)
28 .\" Modified Sat Jul 24 19:22:14 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)
29 .\" Modified Mon May 27 21:37:47 1996 by Martin Schulze (joey@linux.de)
31 .TH GETPWENT 3 2010-10-21 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
33 getpwent, setpwent, endpwent \- get password file entry
36 .B #include <sys/types.h>
39 .B struct passwd *getpwent(void);
41 .B void setpwent(void);
43 .B void endpwent(void);
47 Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
48 .BR feature_test_macros (7)):
56 _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE\ >=\ 500 ||
57 _XOPEN_SOURCE\ &&\ _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED
63 function returns a pointer to a structure containing
64 the broken-out fields of a record from the password database
65 (e.g., the local password file
70 is called, it returns the first entry; thereafter, it returns successive
75 function rewinds to the beginning
76 of the password database.
80 function is used to close the password database
81 after all processing has been performed.
83 The \fIpasswd\fP structure is defined in \fI<pwd.h>\fP as follows:
88 char *pw_name; /* username */
89 char *pw_passwd; /* user password */
90 uid_t pw_uid; /* user ID */
91 gid_t pw_gid; /* group ID */
92 char *pw_gecos; /* user information */
93 char *pw_dir; /* home directory */
94 char *pw_shell; /* shell program */
99 For more information about the fields of this structure, see
104 function returns a pointer to a
106 structure, or NULL if
107 there are no more entries or an error occurs.
110 is set appropriately.
111 If one wants to check
113 after the call, it should be set to zero before the call.
115 The return value may point to a static area, and may be overwritten
116 by subsequent calls to
121 (Do not pass the returned pointer to
134 of files was open already in the calling process.
137 The maximum number of files was open already in the system.
141 Insufficient memory to allocate
144 .\" to allocate the passwd structure, or to allocate buffers
147 Insufficient buffer space supplied.
151 local password database file
153 SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
156 field is not specified in POSIX, but is present on most implementations.