ID(1)

📦 version 1.053, in alpine 3.24

✨ NAME ✨

id — show user information. This is the ID(1) page, from User Contributed Perl Documentation, bestie 💖

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

id [user]
id -G [-n] [user]
id -g [-nr] [user]
id -u [-nr] [user]
id -p [user]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so id displays the user and group names and numeric IDs of the calling process. If the real and effective IDs are different, both are displayed; otherwise only the real ID is displayed. No cap ✨

If a user (username or user ID) is specified, the information about that user is displayed instead of the information from the calling process. It's giving "who dis?" but make it Unix 🫶

🎀 OPTIONS AND ARGUMENTS 🎀

  • -G — Display all of the group IDs (effective, real, etc) separated by a space. The IDs are not in a given order. Slay, but chaotic order 💅
  • -a — Nothing. The option is included for compatibility with some versions of id. Literally does nothing, bestie — it's just here to be friendly 😭
  • -g — Display the effective group ID.
  • -n — Force the options -G, -g and -u to display the matching name instead of the number for the user and group IDs. If any of the ID numbers do not have a matching name, the number will be displayed as usual. Name reveal era 🔥
  • -p — Display the user/group information on separate lines. If the username returned by getlogin is different than the username associated with the calling program's user ID, it is displayed preceded by the phrase login. The real ID, effective user ID (if different), real group ID, and effective group ID (if different) are displayed preceded by uid, euid, rgid, and egid respectively. Finally, group membership is displayed with each group separated by a space. All information is displayed as names unless there is no name matching the ID. Then the ID is shown as usual. Main character energy, one line at a time 👑
  • -r — Force the options -g and <-u> to display the information associated with the real user/group IDs instead of the effective ID information. Yes, <-u> with the angle brackets is exactly what the page says — preserved, no edits, iykyk 🧚
  • -u — Display the effective user ID.

🦋 EXIT STATUS 🦋

id exits with status 0 on success, or 1 if an error occurred. Simple vibe check: 0 = slayed, 1 = something went off 💀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Theo Van Dinter (felicity@kluge.net) — iconic author behavior, fr fr 🎀

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

who(1) — go check that one too, bestie 👀

💖 cute sign-off: this page is serving perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15. Bye bestie, go check your IDs 💅🌸

📦 where this page comes from