You are viewing the version of this documentation from Perl 5.41.5. This is a development version of Perl.
getlogin

This implements the C library function of the same name, which on most systems returns the current login from /etc/utmp, if any. If it returns the empty string, use getpwuid.

my $login = getlogin || getpwuid($<) || "Kilroy";

Do not consider getlogin for authentication: it is not as secure as getpwuid.

Portability issues: "getlogin" in perlport.