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I want to know how to see the users by alphabetical order when using this command:

cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd

I get a list with a lot of names including mine but it's very long. I want to order it alphabetically.

How I can do this? Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

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8

Simplest:

cut -d: -f1  /etc/passwd | sort

To also view the user(s) information from the terminal type: 

grep /home /etc/passwd | sort

The /home tells grep to drop any lines that do not contain the text /home thereby filtering out many lines that don't have information about users from the results of the command. In Ubuntu the user directories are located in the /home directory by default. This command will show several attributes for each user. The user attributes are: 

username:password:UID:GID:info:home directory:shell
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2
  • Depending on the situation, one might actually want to use getent passwd instead of the passwd file directly.
    – muru
    Mar 25 '15 at 18:58
  • @GilBitton Don't thank people! ;-) If you like the answer, just click the little grey ☑ under the abysmally small number now turning it into beautiful green. If you do not like the answer, click on the little grey down-arrow below the number, and if you really like the answer, click on the little grey checkmark and the little up-arrow... ;-)
    – Fabby
    Apr 11 '15 at 7:35
6

If you want just to sort only the names (after cut) use Rinzwind's answer.

If you want to sort the /etc/passwd file alphabetically based on the usernames:

sort -t: -k1,1 /etc/passwd
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2

Use the compgen command piped with sort:

compgen -u | sort
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0

You could do this through python itself. Just run the below command on terminal.

$ python3 -c 'with open("/etc/passwd") as f:
    for i in sorted([x.split(":")[0] for x in f]):
        print(i)'

Note that the spaces before for was very important.

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