.\" Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)

.\"

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.\" References consulted:

.\"     Linux libc source code

.\"     Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)

.\"     386BSD man pages

.\" Modified Sat Jul 24 19:23:25 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)

.\" Modified Mon May 27 21:37:47 1996 by Martin Schulze (joey@linux.de)

.\"

.TH GETPW 3 2017-09-15 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"

.SH NAME

getpw \- reconstruct password line entry

.SH SYNOPSIS

.nf

.BR "#define _GNU_SOURCE" "             /* See feature_test_macros(7) */"

.B #include <sys/types.h>

.B #include <pwd.h>

.PP

.BI "int getpw(uid_t " uid ", char *" buf );

.fi

.SH DESCRIPTION

The

.BR getpw ()

function reconstructs the password line entry for

the given user ID \fIuid\fP in the buffer \fIbuf\fP.

The returned buffer contains a line of format

.PP

.in +4n

.EX

.B name:passwd:uid:gid:gecos:dir:shell

.EE

.in

.PP

The \fIpasswd\fP structure is defined in \fI<pwd.h>\fP as follows:

.PP

.in +4n

.EX

struct passwd {

    char   *pw_name;       /* username */

    char   *pw_passwd;     /* user password */

    uid_t   pw_uid;        /* user ID */

    gid_t   pw_gid;        /* group ID */

    char   *pw_gecos;      /* user information */

    char   *pw_dir;        /* home directory */

    char   *pw_shell;      /* shell program */

};

.EE

.in

.PP

For more information about the fields of this structure, see

.BR passwd (5).

.SH RETURN VALUE

The

.BR getpw ()

function returns 0 on success; on error, it returns \-1, and

.I errno

is set to indicate the error.

.PP

If

.I uid

is not found in the password database,

.BR getpw ()

returns \-1, sets

.I errno

to 0, and leaves

.I buf

unchanged.

.SH ERRORS

.TP

.BR 0 " or " ENOENT

No user corresponding to

.IR uid .

.TP

.B EINVAL

.I buf

is NULL.

.TP

.B ENOMEM

Insufficient memory to allocate

.I passwd

structure.

.SH FILES

.TP

.I /etc/passwd

password database file

.SH ATTRIBUTES

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see

.BR attributes (7).

.TS

allbox;

lb lb lb

l l l.

Interface	Attribute	Value

T{

.BR getpw ()

T}	Thread safety	MT-Safe locale

.TE

.sp 1

.SH CONFORMING TO

SVr2.

.SH BUGS

The

.BR getpw ()

function is dangerous as it may overflow the provided buffer

.IR buf .

It is obsoleted by

.BR getpwuid (3).

.SH SEE ALSO

.BR endpwent (3),

.BR fgetpwent (3),

.BR getpwent (3),

.BR getpwnam (3),

.BR getpwuid (3),

.BR putpwent (3),

.BR setpwent (3),

.BR passwd (5)

.SH COLOPHON

This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux

.I man-pages

project.

A description of the project,

information about reporting bugs,

and the latest version of this page,

can be found at

\%https://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.