getpwnam quit returning passwd: expected?

[Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>]

I noticed in the latests revisions, getpwnam has quit returning the
encrypted password for the user, even if you're root (seemed a little
weird since root can read any file anyway).  Is that intentional?  If
so, is there somewhere I can read up on the rationale?  I didn't know
if this was an upstream thing or a Debian issue.

(I was using perl to solve a local problem with getpwnam, and since
 perl doesn't provide the getsp* functions, this change caused some
 difficulty.  I just wanted to make sure I know what's going on so I
 can modify my code in a way that's unlikely to break again in the
 future.)

Thanks

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930