:mod:`netrc` --- netrc file processing

======================================

.. module:: netrc

   :synopsis: Loading of .netrc files.

.. moduleauthor:: Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>

.. sectionauthor:: Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>

.. versionadded:: 1.5.2

The :class:`netrc` class parses and encapsulates the netrc file format used by

the Unix :program:`ftp` program and other FTP clients.

.. class:: netrc([file])

   A :class:`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 :file:`.netrc` in the user's home directory will

   be read.  Parse errors will raise :exc:`NetrcParseError` with diagnostic

   information including the file name, line number, and terminating token.

.. exception:: NetrcParseError

   Exception raised by the :class:`netrc` class when syntactical errors are

   encountered in source text.  Instances of this exception provide three

   interesting attributes:  :attr:`msg` is a textual explanation of the error,

   :attr:`filename` is the name of the source file, and :attr:`lineno` gives the

   line number on which the error was found.

.. _netrc-objects:

netrc Objects

-------------

A :class:`netrc` instance has the following methods:

.. method:: 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``.

.. method:: 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 :class:`netrc` have public instance variables:

.. attribute:: 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.

.. attribute:: netrc.macros

   Dictionary mapping macro names to string lists.

.. note::

   Passwords are limited to a subset of the ASCII character set. Versions of

   this module prior to 2.3 were extremely limited.  Starting with 2.3, 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.