Provided by: manpages-posix_2017a-2_all 
PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface
may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface
may not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
id — return user identity
SYNOPSIS
id [user]
id -G [-n] [user]
id -g [-nr] [user]
id -u [-nr] [user]
DESCRIPTION
If no user operand is provided, the id utility shall write the user and group IDs and the corresponding
user and group names of the invoking process to standard output. If the effective and real IDs do not
match, both shall be written. If multiple groups are supported by the underlying system (see the
description of {NGROUPS_MAX} in the System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017), the supplementary group
affiliations of the invoking process shall also be written.
If a user operand is provided and the process has appropriate privileges, the user and group IDs of the
selected user shall be written. In this case, effective IDs shall be assumed to be identical to real IDs.
If the selected user has more than one allowable group membership listed in the group database, these
shall be written in the same manner as the supplementary groups described in the preceding paragraph.
OPTIONS
The id utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax
Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
-G Output all different group IDs (effective, real, and supplementary) only, using the format
"%u\n". If there is more than one distinct group affiliation, output each such affiliation,
using the format " %u", before the <newline> is output.
-g Output only the effective group ID, using the format "%u\n".
-n Output the name in the format "%s" instead of the numeric ID using the format "%u".
-r Output the real ID instead of the effective ID.
-u Output only the effective user ID, using the format "%u\n".
OPERANDS
The following operand shall be supported:
user The login name for which information is to be written.
STDIN
Not used.
INPUT FILES
None.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of id:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the
Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the
precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale
categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization
variables.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters
(for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic
messages written to standard error and informative messages written to standard output.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
The following formats shall be used when the LC_MESSAGES locale category specifies the POSIX locale. In
other locales, the strings uid, gid, euid, egid, and groups may be replaced with more appropriate strings
corresponding to the locale.
"uid=%u(%s) gid=%u(%s)\n", <real user ID>, <user-name>,
<real group ID>, <group-name>
If the effective and real user IDs do not match, the following shall be inserted immediately before the
'\n' character in the previous format:
" euid=%u(%s)"
with the following arguments added at the end of the argument list:
<effective user ID>, <effective user-name>
If the effective and real group IDs do not match, the following shall be inserted directly before the
'\n' character in the format string (and after any addition resulting from the effective and real user
IDs not matching):
" egid=%u(%s)"
with the following arguments added at the end of the argument list:
<effective group-ID>, <effective group name>
If the process has supplementary group affiliations or the selected user is allowed to belong to multiple
groups, the first shall be added directly before the <newline> in the format string:
" groups=%u(%s)"
with the following arguments added at the end of the argument list:
<supplementary group ID>, <supplementary group name>
and the necessary number of the following added after that for any remaining supplementary group IDs:
",%u(%s)"
and the necessary number of the following arguments added at the end of the argument list:
<supplementary group ID>, <supplementary group name>
If any of the user ID, group ID, effective user ID, effective group ID, or supplementary/multiple group
IDs cannot be mapped by the system into printable user or group names, the corresponding "(%s)" and name
argument shall be omitted from the corresponding format string.
When any of the options are specified, the output format shall be as described in the OPTIONS section.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
Output produced by the -G option and by the default case could potentially produce very long lines on
systems that support large numbers of supplementary groups. (On systems with user and group IDs that are
32-bit integers and with group names with a maximum of 8 bytes per name, 93 supplementary groups plus
distinct effective and real group and user IDs could theoretically overflow the 2048-byte {LINE_MAX} text
file line limit on the default output case. It would take about 186 supplementary groups to overflow the
2048-byte barrier using id -G). This is not expected to be a problem in practice, but in cases where it
is a concern, applications should consider using fold -s before post-processing the output of id.
EXAMPLES
None.
RATIONALE
The functionality provided by the 4 BSD groups utility can be simulated using:
id -Gn [ user ]
The 4 BSD command groups was considered, but it was not included because it did not provide the
functionality of the id utility of the SVID. Also, it was thought that it would be easier to modify id to
provide the additional functionality necessary to systems with multiple groups than to invent another
command.
The options -u, -g, -n, and -r were added to ease the use of id with shell commands substitution. Without
these options it is necessary to use some preprocessor such as sed to select the desired piece of
information. Since output such as that produced by:
id -u -n
is frequently wanted, it seemed desirable to add the options.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
fold, logname, who
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility
Syntax Guidelines
The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2017, getgid(), getgroups(), getuid()
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard
for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original
IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document.
The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced
during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2017 ID(1POSIX)