title: Perl getpwuid() and getpwnam()
body: <p>I'm learning perl's *nix system tools and I've been staring at the following two sentences for several minutes:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>You can think of getpwuid() and getpwnam() operators as <i>random access</i> -- they grab a specific entry by key so you have to have a key to start with. Another way of accessing the password file is <i>sequential access</i> -- grabbing each entry in some apparently random order.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I'm 99% sure this is a typo, but if it isn't I'm clearly missing a key idea. Can anyone shed some light on the subject?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance.</p>