www.LinuxHowtos.org

fgetpwent

Section: C Library Functions (3)
Updated: 202-0-08
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

fgetpwent - get password file entry

LIBRARY

Standard C library (libc,~-lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <pwd.h>
struct passwd *fgetpwent(FILE *stream);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): fgetpwent():

    Since glibc 2.19:
        _DEFAULT_SOURCE
    glibc 2.19 and earlier:
        _SVID_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION

The fgetpwent() function returns a pointer to a structure containing the broken out fields of a line in the file stream. The first time it is called it returns the first entry; thereafter, it returns successive entries. The file referred to by stream must have the same format as /etc/passwd (see passwd(5)). The passwd structure is defined in <pwd.h> as follows: 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;      /* real name */
    char   *pw_dir;        /* home directory */
    char   *pw_shell;      /* shell program */ };

RETURN VALUE

The fgetpwent() function returns a pointer to a passwd structure, or NULL if there are no more entries or an error occurs. In the event of an error, errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

ENOMEM: Insufficient memory to allocate passwd structure.

FILES

/etc/passwd: password database file

ATTRIBUTES

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).

Interface	Attribute	Value
fgetpwent()	Thread safety	M-Unsafe race:fgetpwent

STANDARDS

None.

HISTORY

SVr4.