On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 14:55 -0800, Gordon Messmer wrote: > Todd Denniston wrote: > > Craig White wrote, On 12/19/2008 12:03 PM: > >> getent passwd | grep $1 | awk -F: '{ print $6 }' > ... > > Thanks for that getent call suggestion, it simplifies one of my scripts > > greatly. > > > The grep is useless, and should be discouraged. Use something like this > instead: > > getent passwd "$1" | awk -F: '{ print $6 }' > or: > getent passwd "$1" | cut -d: -f6 > > Calling "getent passwd" on a machine that uses LDAP as an NSS source > causes a full search of the directory, which can be very expensive on > large directories. It's better not to make a habit of doing that. > > Plus, the "grep" method fails if the username that you're searching for > is a substring of other usernames in the passwd database. ---- agreed on all accounts...I tossed out the grep idea just as a quick thought and had doubts about the grep notion but I didn't have the time to test out other ideas. Craig -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines