> } non-DB-capable programs which access their contents (awk, cut, sed, etc.).
>
>      Anybody that does this (except for special case software where the
> environment is completely controlled) should be taken out and shot.
> And, their programs/scripts deserve to die an immediate and most
> horrible death.
>
>      Ever since Sun invented Yellow Pages 15+ years ago, there has been
> no guarantee that /etc/passwd would have useful data.  Add to that,
do we really need this files (/etc/passwd, /etc/master.passwd) to exist?

why all tools couldn't do anything in database and (for spacial case) tool
like vipw could generate master.passwd temporarily, then do
popen("diff -u <original one> <edited one>","r") and process the data?