getpwent_r, fgetpwent_r - get passwd file entry reentrantly
Contents
Attributes
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ getpwent_r() │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe race:pwent locale │
├───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ fgetpwent_r() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe │
└───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
In the above table, pwent in race:pwent signifies that if any of the functions setpwent(), getpwent(),
endpwent(), or getpwent_r() are used in parallel in different threads of a program, then data races could
occur.
Description
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 stream.
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 structpasswd. And next the buffer buf of size buflen that can hold additional strings.
The result of these functions, the structpasswd read from the stream, is stored in the provided buffer
*pwbuf, and a pointer to this structpasswd is returned in *pwbufp.
Errors
ENOENT No more entries.
ERANGE Insufficient buffer space supplied. Try again with larger buffer.
Examples
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <pwd.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#define BUFLEN 4096
int
main(void)
{
struct passwd pw;
struct passwd *pwp;
char buf[BUFLEN];
int i;
setpwent();
while (1) {
i = getpwent_r(&pw, buf, sizeof(buf), &pwp);
if (i)
break;
printf("%s (%jd)\tHOME %s\tSHELL %s\n", pwp->pw_name,
(intmax_t) pwp->pw_uid, pwp->pw_dir, pwp->pw_shell);
}
endpwent();
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
History
These functions are done in a style resembling the POSIX version of functions like getpwnam_r(3).
Library
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
Name
getpwent_r, fgetpwent_r - get passwd file entry reentrantly
Notes
The function getpwent_r() is not really reentrant since it shares the reading position in the stream with
all other threads.
Return Value
On success, these functions return 0 and *pwbufp is a pointer to the structpasswd. On error, these
functions return an error value and *pwbufp is NULL.
See Also
fgetpwent(3), getpw(3), getpwent(3), getpwnam(3), getpwuid(3), putpwent(3), passwd(5) Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-06-15 getpwent_r(3)
Standards
None.
Synopsis
#include<pwd.h>intgetpwent_r(structpasswd*restrictpwbuf,charbuf[restrict.buflen],size_tbuflen,structpasswd**restrictpwbufp);intfgetpwent_r(FILE*restrictstream,structpasswd*restrictpwbuf,charbuf[restrict.buflen],size_tbuflen,structpasswd**restrictpwbufp); Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): getpwent_r(), Since glibc 2.19: _DEFAULT_SOURCE glibc 2.19 and earlier: _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE fgetpwent_r(): Since glibc 2.19: _DEFAULT_SOURCE glibc 2.19 and earlier: _SVID_SOURCE
Versions
Other systems use the 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);
