Re: proposed new program: getpwnam [Re: --format flag

[Bob Proulx]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> Bruce Korb wrote:
> > So, what do you think about adding POSIX library/sys calls as
> > a collection of command line utilities?  We already have "stat",
> > but don't have "getpwnam".  There are a few others.....

> I hesitate to add new tools that can be approximated with
> one-liners using e.g Perl
> 
>   $ perl -MUser::pwent -e '$pw=getpwnam "root" or die; print
>   $pw->shell,"\n"'
>   /bin/bash
 
I will use two commands but I think this is simpler.

  getent passwd bob | awk -F: '{print$NF}'
  /bin/bash

Obviously you can pick out whatever field you need using this.

> So, in this case it's probably worth it.  I do like the idea of a
> getpwnam command, but am not sure that should be the name of the command.
> Obviously it's a good name from the consistency-with-library-name
> standpoint, but its mangled name is sort of reminiscent of `creat'.
> Suggested alternatives welcome.

How would this relate to the existing 'getent' from glibc?  There
appears to be a lot of overlap.  But getent seems to be more general.

  getent passwd bob
  bob:x:1000:1000:Bob Proulx,,,:/home/bob:/bin/bash

  getent aliases root
  root:     bob

  getent hosts 127.0.0.1
  127.0.0.1       torment.proulx.com torment localhost

  getent services ssh
  ssh                   22/tcp

Of course other systems like HP-UX don't have glibc and also don't
have 'getent' either because of this.  Personally I would rather see
getent in coreutils so that it would be available on all of the
platforms that coreutils is available.  And of course a getpwnam in
coreutils would be nice for similar reasons.

Bob