International PHP Conference Berlin 2025

get_current_user

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

get_current_userGets the name of the owner of the current PHP script

Description

get_current_user(): string

Returns the name of the owner of the current PHP script.

Parameters

This function has no parameters.

Return Values

Returns the username as a string.

Examples

Example #1 get_current_user() example

<?php
echo 'Current script owner: ' . get_current_user();
?>

The above example will output something similar to:

Current script owner: SYSTEM

See Also

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User Contributed Notes 3 notes

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117
justin samuel
19 years ago
to get the username of the process owner (rather than the file owner), you can use:

<?php
$processUser
= posix_getpwuid(posix_geteuid());
print
$processUser['name'];
?>
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8
south dot bucks at gmail dot com
12 years ago
On Centos, the Red Hat linux clone, this instruction gives the file's OWNER (the first parameter in instruction 'chown'). It does not reveal the file's GROUP.

get_current_user() does NOT reveal the current process' user's identity.

See: posix_getuid() - Return the real user ID of the current process
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5
s dot bond1 at lse dot ac dot uk
17 years ago
The information returned by get_current_user() seems to depend on the platform.

Using PHP 5.1.1 running as CGI with IIS 5.0 on Windows NT, get_current_user() returns the owner of the process running the script, *not* the owner of the script itself.

It's easy to test - create a file containing:

<?php
echo get_current_user();
?>

Then access it through the browser. I get: IUSR_MACHINE, the Internet Guest Account on Windows, which is certainly not the owner of the script.
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