Mac OSX: users vs dscl command to list user

I executed those two commands in terminal:

users

and

dscl . -read /Users/

and then they tell me two different results. The second one gave me a long list while the first one just showed my username on Mac.

When I google for "List users on Mac", most will tell me use the second one. However when I execute "man users", it shows me that this command is to "list current Users".

Could you tell me the differences?

Also, how do I execute a command as mysql user. The following command didn't work:

mkdir mysqldir --user mysql

3 Answers

dscl . -read /Users/ doesn't print anything particularly interesting; you probably mean dscl . -ls /Users, which prints a list of user accounts that are defined on your computer (including a great many normally-hidden system accounts). users, on the other hand, prints a list of users who are currently logged in on your computer (usually just you).

For your second question: you can use the sudo command to run commands as another user (e.g. sudo -u _mysql mkdir mysqldir). Note that this requires admin rights, and will ask you to enter your password for verification.

Get a list of all users (just their short names):

dscl . -list /Users

Get detailed user info on a particular user:

dscl . -read /Users/<username>

Get a particular value in a user's info:

dscl . -read /Users/<username> <key>

Examples of <key> are RecordName, RealName, UniqueID, and NFSHomeDirectory.

Get detailed user info on all users:

dscl . -readall /Users

Get a particular value in all users' info:

dscl . -readall /Users <key>

Hopefully you notice the difference between -list and -read. Additional goodies: -plist outputs as XML, -search lets you specify a key and value and you will get output indicating where that value is.

2rs2ts:~/ $ dscl . -search /Users RealName "Andrew Garrett" [12:04:07]
2rs2ts RealName = ( "Andrew Garrett"
)
2rs2ts:~/ $ dscl -plist . -read /Users/nobody [12:05:29]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:AppleMetaNodeLocation</key> <array> <string>/Local/Default</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:GeneratedUID</key> <array> <string>FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAAFFFFFFFE</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:NFSHomeDirectory</key> <array> <string>/var/empty</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:Password</key> <array> <string>*</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:PrimaryGroupID</key> <array> <string>-2</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:RealName</key> <array> <string>Unprivileged User</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:RecordName</key> <array> <string>nobody</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:RecordType</key> <array> <string>dsRecTypeStandard:Users</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:SMBRID</key> <array> <string>501</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:UniqueID</key> <array> <string>-2</string> </array> <key>dsAttrTypeStandard:UserShell</key> <array> <string>/usr/bin/false</string> </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Of course, you can read the man pages to get more info.

The 'users' command only lists the currently logged-in users.

DESCRIPTION users lists the login names of the users currently on the system, in sorted order, space separated, on a single line.