Retrieving unique user numbers

[Hans Mulder]

In <1991Apr25.153217.9572 at oakhill.sps.mot.com> root at oakhill.sps.mot.com (Operator) writes:

>Hello all --

>I was asked by a user how to retrieve/identify the unique
>user number from within the shell environment (ksh). What
>he is looking for would, preferably, function in much the
>same fashion as the command [echo `/usr/bin/logname`], where
>the result of this op could then be piped into a subsequent
>operation. 

On this system (running SunOS 4.1.1)

id | sed 's/[^=]*=//;s/(.*//'

tells you your uid.  You didn't say what OS you are running.
The man page for id(1v) suggest that it is a SysVism, so it may not be
available on your system.

If you're worried about the efficiency of invoking sed, you'll have to
write a C program that prints the output of the getuid() system call.


BTW, is there any difference between

echo `/usr/bin/logname`

and

logname

??  In general, the echo `...` constructs reduces whitespace, but your
users don't have whitespace in their login names, have they?

>Many thanks,

You're welcome

>Vance

Hans Mulder	hansm at cs.kun.nl