How do I get the current user in Perl in a portable way?

Question

How does one get the current user in a portable way?

This seems like an FAQ but perlport doesn\'t speak about it, maybe because some odd systems don\'t have the conc

Answer 1

getlogin:

This implements the C library function of the same name, which on most systems returns the current login from /etc/utmp, if any. If null, use "getpwuid".

$login = getlogin || getpwuid($<) || "Kilroy";

Do not consider "getlogin" for authentication: it is not as secure as "getpwuid".

You can also try ||-ing this with POSIX::cuserid() and Win32::LoginName().

Answer 2

Win32::LoginName() can be used on Windows to retrieve the user name (without the domain name, so it may be ambiguous):

use Win32;
my $username = Win32::LoginName;

Win32::pwent implements getpwuid() and other features to query the user database. Unfortunately, it failed to install on my StrawberryPerl 5.12.