a common task for a system administrator is to

Question

A common task for a system administrator is to create new user accounts. In this lab you will be creating output that looks like an /etc/passwd file.

The Problem

You are to write a Perl script that will read in values from an INPUT file to be passed as an argument to the script.  The file contains the following information:

• The user's full name (e.g.,  Mike H Smith)
  • A period after Middle name is optional
  • Full Middle name is also optional
  • Assume there is always one space between First, Middle, and Last name
  • You do NOT have to perform error checking on this field
• The user's ID number (ssno)
  • Should be of the form: 3 digits, dash, 2 digits, dash, 4 digits

Ex: "111-22-3333"

•  
  • You DO have to perform error check on this field using string functions mentioned in class. If the full social security number (the part between "/") is not of the right format you MUST print out the following message to STDERR: The String "Bad Soc" followed by a colon, then a space and the offending invalid Soc number. For Example:

Bad Soc: 123-456-7888

•  
  • Your error message must look EXACTLY like this, do not vary even slightly!
  • You ONLY have to make sure that the dashes are in the correct places and the number of characters is correct NOT that the other characters are actually digits
  • (DO NOT USE split() and REGULAR EXPRESSIONS for this)

• The user's group (will be "student", "staff" ONLY)
  • You do NOT need to perform error checking on this field

Based on this information, you will print to STDOUT a user line analogous to the one that would appear in /etc/passwd.

The INPUT file will be formatted as follows:

First Middle Last/SSN/Group

With the "/" character being used as the delimiter.

For example:

John X. Doe/555-12-1234/staff

Mike Xavier Smith/123-45-1111/student

Susan Q Jones/109-54-8832/student

Emily Sophie Zielewsky/987-65-4322/staff

Once you have the necessary input from the file, you need to create the following fields to display to STDOUT:

username:passwd:uid:gid:full name:home dir path:shell

username:

o   Create a old DCE style username for students: first initial, middle initial, last initial followed by last 4 of SSN (abc1234).

o   Use just the 3 initials of the name for the username for staff (yxn)

o   Note that there are NO uppercase letters in usernames

passwd:

In the modern age of password shadowing you would never really do this, but for the purpose of this lab you should allow the user to enter input for this value.