Availability: 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.
It defines the following items:
| uid) | 
| name) | 
| ) | 
See Also: