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GETPWENT_R(3)                 Linux Programmer's Manual                 GETPWENT_R(3)

NAME         top

       getpwent_r, fgetpwent_r - get passwd file entry reentrantly

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <pwd.h>

       int getpwent_r(struct passwd *pwbuf, char *buf,
                      size_t buflen, struct passwd **pwbufp);

       int fgetpwent_r(FILE *fp, struct passwd *pwbuf, char *buf,
                       size_t buflen, struct passwd **pwbufp);

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

       getpwent_r(), _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
       fgetpwent_r(): _SVID_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION         top

       The functions getpwent_r() and fgetpwent_r() are the reentrant versions of
       getpwent(3) and fgetpwent(3).  The former reads the next passwd entry from the
       stream initialized by setpwent(3).  The latter reads the next passwd entry
       from the stream fp.

       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;     /* user information */
               char    *pw_dir;       /* home directory */
               char    *pw_shell;     /* shell program */
           };

       For more information about the fields of this structure, see passwd(5).

       The nonreentrant functions return a pointer to static storage, where this
       static storage contains further pointers to user name, password, gecos field,
       home directory and shell.  The reentrant functions described here return all
       of that in caller-provided buffers.  First of all there is the buffer pwbuf
       that can hold a struct passwd.  And next the buffer buf of size buflen that
       can hold additional strings.  The result of these functions, the struct passwd
       read from the stream, is stored in the provided buffer *pwbuf, and a pointer
       to this struct passwd is returned in *pwbufp.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, these functions return 0 and *pwbufp is a pointer to the struct
       passwd.  On error, these functions return an error value and *pwbufp is NULL.

ERRORS         top

       ENOENT No more entries.

       ERANGE Insufficient buffer space supplied.  Try again with larger buffer.

CONFORMING TO         top

       These functions are GNU extensions, done in a style resembling the POSIX
       version of functions like getpwnam_r(3).  Other systems use prototype

           struct passwd *
           getpwent_r(struct passwd *pwd, char *buf, int buflen);

       or, better,

           int
           getpwent_r(struct passwd *pwd, char *buf, int buflen,
                      FILE **pw_fp);

NOTES         top

       The function getpwent_r() is not really reentrant since it shares the reading
       position in the stream with all other threads.

EXAMPLE         top

       #define _GNU_SOURCE
       #include <pwd.h>
       #include <stdio.h>
       #define BUFLEN 4096

       int
       main(void)
       {
           struct passwd pw, *pwp;
           char buf[BUFLEN];
           int i;

           setpwent();
           while (1) {
               i = getpwent_r(&pw, buf, BUFLEN, &pwp);
               if (i)
                   break;
               printf("%s (%d)\tHOME %s\tSHELL %s\n", pwp->pw_name,
                      pwp->pw_uid, pwp->pw_dir, pwp->pw_shell);
           }
           endpwent();
           exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
       }

SEE ALSO         top

       fgetpwent(3), getpw(3), getpwent(3), getpwnam(3), getpwuid(3), putpwent(3),
       passwd(5)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 3.32 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
       at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

GNU                                   2010-10-21                        GETPWENT_R(3)

HTML rendering created 2010-12-03 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface

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