http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=719

Current Perl documentation can be found at perldoc.perl.org.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

If perl was installed correctly, and your shadow library was written properly, the getpw*() functions described in the perlfunc manpage should in theory provide (read-only) access to entries in the shadow password file. To change the file, make a new shadow password file (the format varies from system to system - see passwd(5) for specifics) and use pwd_mkdb(8) to install it (see pwd_mkdb(5) for more details).