The GNU C Library - Lookup User

Looking Up One User

You can search the system user database for information about a specific user using getpwuid or getpwnam . These functions are declared in `pwd.h'.

Function struct passwd * getpwuid (uid_t uid)

This function returns a pointer to a statically-allocated structure containing information about the user whose user ID is uid. This structure may be overwritten on subsequent calls to getpwuid .

A null pointer value indicates there is no user in the data base with user ID uid.

Function struct passwd * getpwnam (const char *name)

This function returns a pointer to a statically-allocated structure containing information about the user whose user name is name. This structure may be overwritten on subsequent calls to getpwnam .

A null pointer value indicates there is no user named name.