3.2.62 getpwnam

getpwnam NAME

This function does the same thing as getpwnam(3): it translates a username to the corresponding passwd file entry. The return value in list context is:

($name,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$quota,$comment,$gcos,$dir,$shell)

If you want to do this repeatedly, consider caching the data in a hash (associative array) using getpwent.

In scalar context, getpwnam returns only the numeric user ID.