Help with getpwnam - and what it returns..

Rhodium has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi all
I am having some trouble with the following snippet of code. Basically given a user, it's just supposed to return the uid. For whatever the reason, it's returning an ARRAY.. Huh?

$conf{project} = &AskQuestion("What is the base project for this proje
+ct", "c",
print "***$conf{project}***\n";
my $uid = (getpwnam($conf{project}))[2];
print "***$uid***\n";
[download]

Returns..

What is the base project for this project [mail]:
***mail***
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at ./Projcre
+ate.pl line 145, <STDIN> line 2.
******
[download]

Thanks much
Could someone enlighten me on the finer points of getpwnam. Obviously, I am clueless on this..

Rhodium

The <it>seeker</it> of perl wisdom.

Comment on Help with getpwnam - and what it returns.. Select or Download Code

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Re: Help with getpwnam - and what it returns.. by fokat (Deacon) on Aug 11, 2002 at 04:02 UTC
To me, this looks a lot as if `getpwnam()` is failing. You need to be in a system with `/etc/passwd` or a similar user database (read, a nix system). Also, you must have a user mail*. Insure that the following shell command: `$ id mail` [download] does return some sensible answer. Good luck.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Help with getpwnam - and what it returns.. by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Aug 11, 2002 at 04:05 UTC
Where did you get the idea it is returning an array? Update: for your particular use it should suffice to just `my $uin = getpwnam $conf{project} or die "no such user: $conf{project}";` which will probably run into the `die()` in your case. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Help with getpwnam - and what it returns.. by kschwab (Vicar) on Aug 11, 2002 at 16:28 UTC
Maybe just a cut-and-paste typo, but...: `$conf{project} = &AskQuestion("What is the base project for this project", "c",` [download] appears to be missing an element, a closing paren, and a semicolon. Perhaps that accounts for the syntax error ?	[reply] [d/l]