pwd — The password database¶Platforms: Unix This module provides access to the Unix user account and password database. It is available on all Unix versions. Password database entries are reported as a tuple-like object, whose attributes correspond to the members of the passwd structure (Attribute field below, see <pwd.h>):
The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings. KeyError is raised if the entry asked for cannot be found. Note In traditional Unix the field pw_passwd usually contains a password encrypted with a DES derived algorithm (see module crypt). However most modern unices use a so-called shadow password system. On those unices the pw_passwd field only contains an asterisk ('*') or the letter 'x' where the encrypted password is stored in a file /etc/shadow which is not world readable. Whether the pw_passwd field contains anything useful is system-dependent. If available, the spwd module should be used where access to the encrypted password is required. It defines the following items:
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