12.3 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')