Python 3.6.5 Documentation >  "netrc" — netrc file processing

"netrc" — netrc file processing
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**Source code:** Lib/netrc.py

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

class netrc.netrc([file])

A "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 ".netrc" in the
user’s home directory will be read. Parse errors will raise
"NetrcParseError" with diagnostic information including the file
name, line number, and terminating token. If no argument is
specified on a POSIX system, the presence of passwords in the
".netrc" file will raise a "NetrcParseError" if the file ownership
or permissions are insecure (owned by a user other than the user
running the process, or accessible for read or write by any other
user). This implements security behavior equivalent to that of ftp
and other programs that use ".netrc".

Changed in version 3.4: Added the POSIX permission check.

exception netrc.NetrcParseError

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

netrc Objects
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A "netrc" instance has the following methods:

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".

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 "netrc" have public instance variables:

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.

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.