From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
Date: 2004-02-09T05:58:29+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby way to enumerate users

On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 08:43:11PM +0100, Robert K. wrote:
> >Maybe something like this
> >
> >ruby -naF: -e 'printf "%s\t%s\n", $F[0], $F[5]' /etc/passwd
> >
> 
> Is this always applicable? For example in an NIS+ env
>  - that's why I'm asking.

Definitely not.  NIS, NIS+, NetInfo, non-UNIX POSIX environments, . . .
all sorts of different places the info could be.  What is needed is a
Ruby interface to the getpwent() family of system calls.
I don't see any such thing in the standard library, RAA, or Ruby Forge;
maybe I'm just not looking in the right place, or maybe you have just
discovered your first module project! :)

-Mark