I am attempting to change the UID's of some users to a specific number that I have stored in a hash as the value of its user id.
Right now, when I run this script, for each line of the /etc/passwd file that is read in, the script writes 8 lines to the file that I create in /tmp. As it happens, I am trying to change 8 UIDs. And to make things interesting, of the user id's that I am trying to change, some of the lines will have the old UID, and the rest will have the new UID. I am working on an NCR Unix System (System V, Release 4, Version 3) running perl 5.003

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $PASSWD="/etc/passwd";
my $TMP="/tmp/passwd";

my %LAB=("telcom"=>143,"mgrst"=>138,"dcbst"=>146,"posst"=>152,
 "unity"=>1042,"cron.st"=>135,"admins"=>144,"amgst"=>138);

my %EXCEPTIONS=("mgrst"=>0,"amgst"=>0,"dcbst"=>0,"posst"=>0);

my %UIDS=();

my $server=`uname`;
chomp($server);
my $ext=substr($server,-3);

my $key;

#This code will have to be run on a server in each
#of our stores. The last 3 characters in the server
#name is the store number. The accounts listed in the
#EXCEPTIONS have to have the store number appended to
#it.

foreach $key(keys %LAB){
  if(exists $EXCEPTIONS{$key}){
    my $newkey = $key.$ext;
    $UIDS{$newkey}=$LAB{$key};
  }else{
    $UIDS{$key}=$LAB{$key};
  }
}

my $line;

open(PWD,"$PASSWD")||die"Can't open $PASSWD: $!\n";
open(TMP,">$TMP")||die"Can't open $TMP: $!\n";

# Now here's where I am having trouble
while(<PWD>){
  my($name,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$gcos,$dir,$shell)=split /:/;
  foreach $key(keys %UIDS){
    if($key eq $name){
      $uid=$UIDS{$key};
      $line=join ':',$name,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$gcos,$dir,$shell;
      print TMP $line;
    }else{
      $line=join ':',$name,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$gcos,$dir,$shell;
      print TMP $line;
    }#end of if/else
  }#end of foreach
}#end of while loop

close PWD;
close TMP;
[download]

Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks.

TStanley
--------
There's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us
about this script for Hamlet they've worked out
-- Douglas Adams/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy