Ubuntu Manpage: Unix::AliasFile - Perl interface to /etc/aliases format files

Provided by: libunix-configfile-perl_0.6-1_all

NAME

       Unix::AliasFile - Perl interface to /etc/aliases format files

SYNOPSIS

         use Unix::AliasFile;

         $al = new Unix::AliasFile "/etc/aliases";
         $al->alias("bozos", @members);
         $al->delete("deadlist");
         $al->remove_user("coolmail", "bgates", "badguy");
         $al->add_user("coolmail", "joecool", "goodguy");
         $al->remove_user("*", "deadguy");
         $al->commit();
         undef $al;

DESCRIPTION

       The Unix::AliasFile module provides an abstract interface to Unix alias files.  It
       automatically handles file locking, getting colons and commas in the right places, and all
       the other niggling details.

       Unlike some of the other Unix::*File modules, this module will preserve the order of your
       alias file, with a few exceptions.  Comments and aliases will appear in the file in the
       same order that they started in, unless you have comment lines interspersed between the
       beginning of an alias and continuation lines for that same alias.  In this case, those
       comments will appear after the alias that contains them.

METHODS

add_user( ALIAS, @USERS )
This method will add the list of users to an existing alias. Users that are already
members of the alias are silently ignored. The special alias name * will add the users to
every alias. Returns 1 on success or 0 on failure.

alias( ALIAS [,@USERS] )
This method can add, modify, or return information about an alias. Supplied with a single
alias parameter, it will return a list consisting of the members of that alias, or undef
if no such alias exists. If you supply more parameters, the named alias will be created
or modified if it already exists. The member list is also returned to you in this case.

aliases( )
This method returns a list of all existing aliases. The list will be sorted in
alphabetical order. In scalar context, this method returns the total number of aliases.

comment( ALIAS, COMMENT )
This method inserts a comment line before the specified alias. You must supply your own
comment marker (#) but a newline will be automatically appended to the comment unless it
already has one. Returns 1 on success and 0 on failure.

commit( [BACKUPEXT] )
See the Unix::ConfigFile documentation for a description of this method.

delempty( )
This method will delete all existing aliases that have no members. It returns a count of
how many aliases were deleted.

delete( ALIAS )
This method will delete the named alias. It has no effect if the supplied alias does not
exist.

new( FILENAME [,OPTIONS] )
See the Unix::ConfigFile documentation for a description of this method.

remove_user( ALIAS, @USERS )
This method will remove the list of users from an existing alias. Users that are not
members of the alias are silently ignored. The special alias name * will remove the users
from every alias. Returns 1 on success or 0 on failure.

rename_user( OLDNAME, NEWNAME )
This method will change one username to another in every alias. Returns the number of
aliases affected.

uncomment( COMMENT )
Remove the comment from the file that matches the supplied text. The match must be exact.
Returns 1 on success and 0 on failure.

BUGS

       While the Unix::AliasFile module will work with Perl versions prior to 5.005, it may
       exhibit a minor bug under those versions.  The bug will cause program aliases with
       embedded comma characters to be broken apart.  This will not happen under 5.005 and up,
       due to the use of the Text::ParseWords module, which changed significantly with the 5.005
       release.

AUTHOR