Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!uhccux!munnari.oz.au!cs.mu.oz.au!ok
From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: awk and shell question
Keywords: awk sh
Message-ID: <2130@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 18 Sep 89 13:02:59 GMT
References: <1163@ispi.UUCP> <2412@netcom.UUCP>
Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au
Lines: 17

In article <2412@netcom.UUCP>, hinton@netcom.UUCP (Greg Hinton) writes:
: In article <1163@ispi.UUCP> jbayer@ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes:
: >I have to get the user id, and then get the user description from /etc/passwd.

: How about this:
: grep \^`who am i | cut -d' ' -f1`\: /etc/passwd | cut -d: -f5

Watch out for BSD-derived systems, where the first "word" from the
"who am i" command has the form "machine!user", e.g. munmurra!ok.
You want the bit after the !.  A much simpler method is to use a shell
variable.  Check "environ" in the manual, and you'll find that you have
	LOGNAME		# System V
or	USER		# BSD
or both.  Just do
	grep "^${LOGNAME}:" /etc/passwd | what-ever-you-want-here
Again, watch out for Yellow Pages; if you're using that you have to do
	ypcat passwd | grep "^${LOGNAME}" | what-ever-you-want-here