The grp module

(Unix only). This module provides an interface to the Unix group database (/etc/group). The getgrgid function returns data for a given group identity, getgrnam for a group name.

Example: Using the grp module

# File: grp-example-1.py

import grp
import os

print grp.getgrgid(os.getgid())
print grp.getgrnam("wheel")

$ python grp-example-1.py
('effbot', '', 4711, ['effbot'])
('wheel', '', 10, ['root', 'effbot', 'gorbot', 'timbot'])

The getgrall function returns a list of database entries for all available groups.

If you’re going to do a lot of group queries, you can save some time by using getgrall to copy all the (current) groups into a dictionary. The groupinfo function in the following example returns the information for either a group identifier (an integer) or a group name (a string):

Example: Using the grp module to cache group information

# File: grp-example-2.py

import grp
import os

# preload group dictionary
_grp = {}
for info in grp.getgrall():
    _grp[info[0]] = _grp[info[2]] = info

def groupinfo(gid):
    # name or gid integer
    return _grp[gid]

print groupinfo(os.getgid())
print groupinfo("wheel")

$ python grp-example-2.py
('effbot', '', 4711, ['effbot'])
('wheel', '', 10, ['root', 'effbot', 'gorbot', 'timbot'])