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:mod:`nis` --- Interface to Sun's NIS (Yellow Pages)
====================================================
.. module:: nis
:platform: Unix
:synopsis: Interface to Sun's NIS (Yellow Pages) library.
.. moduleauthor:: Fred Gansevles <Fred.Gansevles@cs.utwente.nl>
.. sectionauthor:: Moshe Zadka <moshez@zadka.site.co.il>
The :mod:`nis` module gives a thin wrapper around the NIS library, useful for
central administration of several hosts.
Because NIS exists only on Unix systems, this module is only available for Unix.
The :mod:`nis` module defines the following functions:
.. function:: match(key, mapname, domain=default_domain)
Return the match for *key* in map *mapname*, or raise an error
(:exc:`nis.error`) if there is none. Both should be strings, *key* is 8-bit
clean. Return value is an arbitrary array of bytes (may contain ``NULL`` and
other joys).
Note that *mapname* is first checked if it is an alias to another name.
The *domain* argument allows to override the NIS domain used for the lookup. If
unspecified, lookup is in the default NIS domain.
.. function:: cat(mapname, domain=default_domain)
Return a dictionary mapping *key* to *value* such that ``match(key,
mapname)==value``. Note that both keys and values of the dictionary are
arbitrary arrays of bytes.
Note that *mapname* is first checked if it is an alias to another name.
The *domain* argument allows to override the NIS domain used for the lookup. If
unspecified, lookup is in the default NIS domain.
.. function:: maps(domain=default_domain)
Return a list of all valid maps.
The *domain* argument allows to override the NIS domain used for the lookup. If
unspecified, lookup is in the default NIS domain.
.. function:: get_default_domain()
Return the system default NIS domain.
The :mod:`nis` module defines the following exception:
.. exception:: error
An error raised when a NIS function returns an error code.