Ruby in a Nutshell

Name

Etc — Module for /etc directory data retrieval

Synopsis

The Etc module provides functions to retrieve user account-related data from files under /etc directory. This module is Unix-dependent.

Required Library

require ‘etc’

Example

require 'etc'

print "you must be ", Etc.getlogin, ".\n"

Module Functions

getlogin

Returns login name of the user. If this fails, try getpwuid.

getpwnam(name)

Searches in /etc/passwd file (or equivalent database), and returns password entry for the user name. See getpwnam(3) for details. The return value is a passwd structure, which includes the following members:

name	Username(string)
passwd	Encrypted password(string)
uid	User ID(integer)
gid	Group ID(integer)
gecos	Gecos field(string)
dir	Home directory(string)
shell	Login shell(string)
change	Password change time(integer)
quota	Quota value(integer)
age	Password age(integer)
class	User access class(string)
comment	Comment(string)
expire	Account expiration time(integer)

getpwuid([uid])

Returns passwd entry for the specified uid. If uid is omitted, uses the value from getuid. See getpwuid(3) for details.

getgrgid(gid)

Searches in /etc/group file (or equivalent database), and returns group entry for the gid. See getgrgid(3) for detail. The return value is a group structure, which includes the following members:

name	Group name(string)
passwd	Group password(string)
gid	Group ID(integer)
mem	Array of the group member names

getgrnam(name)

Returns the group entry for the specified ...