Extract a list of users from a text file

Question

fo=open("haproxyfile.txt","r")
users=[]
for lines in fo.readlines():
 if 'user' and 'password' in lines:
 items=lines.split() #converts to list"""
 users.append(items[1]) #append the second item that is the username"""
print users

The content of haproxyfile.txt is below

ssl-default-bind-ciphers EECDH+EDSA+ACM:CDH+aRSA+AEdfGCM:EECDH+ECDSA+SHA384:EEC+
ESA+SHA:EDH+aRSA+SHA384:EECDH+aRSA+SHA256:EDH:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES128-SHA256:AES128-S
HA:EDH+SA:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES-SHA256:AES256-SHA:!RC4:!aNULL:!eNULL:!LOW:!3D:!MD5:!EXP:
!PSK:!SRP:!DSS
 # Users
 userlist IntacctAdmins
 group admins users aasghar,achouchoulas,bwright,calla,gspiliotis,haris,pdam
 user aasghar password 1ドル$CFdTKLSRSbQME/
 user achouchoulas password 1ドル$uLy//uPCaVSNhfFG/
 user bwright password 1ドル$q3Fk$kmqM.J531
 user calla password 1ドル$f%g23a44$Bl.1fPj/
 user gspiliotis password 1ドル$d/2OI.TQOiV1
 user haris password 1ドル$mwQ$uG/1mUjE0
 user pdam password 1ドルt24Z$K4FUH/

What I need to parse from the content

The line after having the words groups are the lines where my user names are located. They are the single words after user keyword.I have fetched it using the method above.Is there any better way to fetch it?

• Luke Sawczak: The file should be a little better specified, imo. For example, the way it currently looks, you could potentially just split the group admins users line by commas. :p

Answer 1

There are quite a few possible improvements.

You should open files with the with keyword, this way they get closed no matter what (you don't even close your file).

if 'user' and 'password' in lines: does not mean what you think it does. All non-empty strings are truthy in Python, so if "user" is always True. So you only really check that the line contains "password". Fortunately you don't have any lines containing "password", but not "users", so this bug has not yet become obvious.

The easiest fix for this would be using this:

if "user" in lines and "password" in lines:
 # Stuff

In summary, I would re-write your code like this:

with open("haproxyfile.txt") as f:
 users = [line.split()[1] for line in f 
 if line.strip().startswith("user") and "password" in line]
print users

Note that I omitted the "r" parameter to open, because read-only is the default mode. I also used str.startswith to check if it starts with a string. The strip is probably needed, to get rid of the whitespace at the beginning of your lines. If that is a copy&paste error as well, omit it.

I also wrote it as a list-comprehension and used the fact that you can directly iterate over a file.

• TaraGurung: I am checking the line has user and password on it ,user aasghar password 1ドル$CFdTKLSRSbQME/ as this lines has the both
• Graipher: @TaraGurung No, if 'user' and 'password' in lines is the same as if True and 'password' in lines, which is the same as if 'password' in lines. You either want to do it like I do (which uses the extra information that "user" is the first word), or do if "user" in lines and "password" in lines or if all(x in lines for x in ["user", "password"]).

Answer 2

It's not obvious what your code does or how it works. I have to figure out what the result of lines.split() looks like, and what items[1] represents — and all I have to go by, according to the code, is that the lines of interest contain the word 'password'.

I recommend doing it a completely different way, using regular expression matching, so that it is obvious what kind of text pattern you expect to extract. I would also write it using a list comprehension, so that the users list is defined declaratively, "all at once".

import re
with open('haproxyfile.txt') as f:
 users = [
 match.group(1) for match in (
 re.search(r'^\s*user\s+(\S+)\s+password', line) for line in f
 )
 if match
 ]
print users

Answer 3

Shouldn't passwords be coded? If passwords are not coded-could it put user privacy and/or administrator settings at risk?

• πάντα ῥεῖ: The passwords look encrypted for me. Or what did you mean?
• Mast: Did you mean encrypted instead?
• Simon Forsberg: @Graipher It looks like a real attempt to answer to me, not a good one though. Related
• Graipher: @Simon Fair enough, but I do agree with panta rei that the passwords do look encrypted/hashed, which made me think of this like more of a question asking for clarification when I saw it in the review queue.