I was reading the getpwent(3) man page and there, at the very bottom of the
page...
in the middle of the very bottom of the page...
away from everything ELSE at the very bottom of the page...

...read the following words:

COMPATIBILITY
     The historic function setpwfile(3),  which allowed the specification of
     alternate password databases, has been deprecated and is no longer avail-
     able.


I'm curious as to why setpwfile() was deprecated.  I could sure use this
routine right about now.

There's also something that says that it's useless in a networked environment
and should be avoided.

Why is this?  How else do you propose to get uid/gid/gecos/etc information?

Has anyone thought of implementing fgetpw*(), which takes a FILE * as its
first argument?

There needs to be a way of referencing an alternate passwd file.  It's
oh so useful for debugging programs which would otherwise need to run
at the site on which they are to be implemented.  I like to take my work
home with me.

If I come up with an interface which will permit this, would it make it
into 1.3 or 2.0 or whatever you're calling the release after this one?


				--*greywolf;
--
Woof...