Doc/library/netrc.rst

:mod:`netrc` --- netrc file processing
======================================

.. module:: netrc
   :synopsis: Loading of .netrc files.
.. moduleauthor:: Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
.. sectionauthor:: Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>


The :class:`netrc` class parses and encapsulates the netrc file format used by
the Unix :program:`ftp` program and other FTP clients.


.. class:: netrc([file])

   A :class:`netrc` instance or subclass instance encapsulates data from  a netrc
   file.  The initialization argument, if present, specifies the file to parse.  If
   no argument is given, the file :file:`.netrc` in the user's home directory will
   be read.  Parse errors will raise :exc:`NetrcParseError` with diagnostic
   information including the file name, line number, and terminating token.


.. exception:: NetrcParseError

   Exception raised by the :class:`netrc` class when syntactical errors are
   encountered in source text.  Instances of this exception provide three
   interesting attributes:  :attr:`msg` is a textual explanation of the error,
   :attr:`filename` is the name of the source file, and :attr:`lineno` gives the
   line number on which the error was found.


.. _netrc-objects:

netrc Objects
-------------

A :class:`netrc` instance has the following methods:


.. method:: netrc.authenticators(host)

   Return a 3-tuple ``(login, account, password)`` of authenticators for *host*.
   If the netrc file did not contain an entry for the given host, return the tuple
   associated with the 'default' entry.  If neither matching host nor default entry
   is available, return ``None``.


.. method:: netrc.__repr__()

   Dump the class data as a string in the format of a netrc file. (This discards
   comments and may reorder the entries.)

Instances of :class:`netrc` have public instance variables:


.. attribute:: netrc.hosts

   Dictionary mapping host names to ``(login, account, password)`` tuples.  The
   'default' entry, if any, is represented as a pseudo-host by that name.


.. attribute:: netrc.macros

   Dictionary mapping macro names to string lists.

.. note::

   Passwords are limited to a subset of the ASCII character set.  All ASCII
   punctuation is allowed in passwords, however, note that whitespace and
   non-printable characters are not allowed in passwords.  This is a limitation
   of the way the .netrc file is parsed and may be removed in the future.