pwcat: add password database dump utility by Franklin-Qi · Pull Request #63 · uutils/awk

Franklin-Qi · 2026-07-03T10:16:39Z

Add a pwcat binary that prints the password database in /etc/passwd format for gawk library routines, matching the helper shipped with GNU awk.

Includes integration tests that validate the seven-field output format and compare against getent passwd.

Closes #61

Alonely0

As oech3 had mentioned in the other PR, we would really prefer not to use libc directly if we can help it. I can't see these functions implemented in either nix or rustix, so maybe we could add a safe API boundary in uucore and reuse it here? Mentioning this since we plan to reuse a lot of functionality from uucore in the interpreter directly.

Alonely0 · 2026-07-03T15:35:55Z

PD: use cfg_attr to set an ignore attribute on all tests when not running on Linux.

Franklin-Qi · 2026-07-06T07:45:13Z

PD: use cfg_attr to set an ignore attribute on all tests when not running on Linux.

Thanks for the review and the great suggestion; I’ve frequently encountered this issue before.

sylvestre · 2026-07-26T15:57:47Z

i am sorry but why it should belong to awk ?

oech3 · 2026-07-26T16:40:43Z

why it should belong to awk ?

See #34

sylvestre · 2026-10-18T08:50:01Z

a bunch of jobs are failing

Alonely0 · 2026-10-24T16:51:17Z

sorry, needs to be rebased!

Add the pwcat helper used by gawk library routines such as passwd.awk. Print /etc/passwd-format lines from getpwent/endpwent, return ExitCode from main, and treat BrokenPipe as success. On platforms without a password database, print nothing and exit successfully. libc is needed because rustix/nix/uucore do not expose the password-database iterators. Closes uutils#61

Alonely0 reviewed Jul 3, 2026

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Comment thread src/bin/pwcat.rs Outdated

Comment thread src/bin/pwcat.rs Outdated

oech3 reviewed Jul 4, 2026

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Comment thread src/bin/pwcat.rs Outdated

Franklin-Qi force-pushed the feature-issue#61-add-pwcat branch from 9852239 to c2117de Compare July 6, 2026 07:43

Alonely0 force-pushed the main branch 4 times, most recently from 3cf396b to 048fe2a Compare July 18, 2026 07:28

Alonely0 force-pushed the main branch from 5f0ab6a to 235133e Compare July 23, 2026 17:24

Alonely0 force-pushed the main branch from 23d7128 to 5473924 Compare July 29, 2026 11:08

Alonely0 force-pushed the main branch from aecd4c9 to 0625891 Compare August 24, 2026 11:34

Alonely0 force-pushed the main branch from 1ae415f to 2a8bb04 Compare September 13, 2026 09:06