8.2 pwd -- The password database
Keywords: lib

# 8.2 `pwd` -- The password database

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 7-tuples containing the following items from the password database (see `<pwd.h>`), in order:

Index | Field | 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 field `pw_passwd` only contains a asterisk (`'*'`) or the letter "`x`" where the encrypted password is stored in a file /etc/shadow which is not world readable.

It defines the following items:

`getpwuid`(uid)
  Return the password database entry for the given numeric user ID.

`getpwnam`(name)
  Return the password database entry for the given user name.

`getpwall`()
  Return a list of all available password database entries, in arbitrary order.

See Also:

Module `grp`:
  An interface to the group database, similar to this.