UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi!
i've been searching a way to display the users who are in the /etc/passwd directory...using ls or grep or cat command should do it?i can't find a way to get this right..i mean none of the preview commands function sounded good to me to use...

Code:

awk ' { print $1 } ' /etc/passwd

thanks a lot for your reply!maybe i didn't wrote what i want properly sorry for my bad english...my main problem is how i can use one of the commands(ls,cat,grep(or egrep)) to get the users in /etc/passwd.
any ideas??
thanks again for your reply!

'get the users' can mean different things
list users

Code:

awk -F ':'  '{ print $1}'  /etc/passwd

find if a user exists, ex: username exactly = john

Code:

grep ':john:'  /etc/passwd | awk -F':' '{print $1}'

find users with john in the name

Code:

awk -F':' '{print $1}' /etc/passwd | grep 'john'

[/code]

yeah i'm sorry!i mean the list of users...sorry!what about ls command or cat to get the list of users?is it possible?

ls shows directory contents (files) not users. Not the content of files, just information like filename, size, who owns it, and file permissions

cat displays a file, with no special formatting. /etc/passwd is a colon delimited file, meaning each field (username, uid, gid, etc) is delimited or set apart by the colon character. frappa's answer gave you the same result that you will get from cat /etc/passwd, a mess of stuff on the screen.

You need to find and carefully read a basic UNIX reference on the internet, your absolute best choice would be one in your native language.

/etc/passwd is a file not a directory.
To see the properties of the file /etc/passwd :

Code:

ls -lad /etc/passwd

The easiest way to list the users is to use the unix "listusers" command. However your post suggests only using only basic commands.
A list of user names:

Code:

cut -f1 -d: /etc/passwd