Each line in the file consists of a netgroup name followed by a list of the members of the netgroup. Each member can be either the name of another netgroup or a specification of a tuple as follows:
where the host user and domain are character string names for the corresponding component. Any of the comma separated fields may be empty to specify a ``wildcard'' value or may consist of the string ``-'' to specify ``no valid value''. The members of the list may be separated by whitespace; the ``\'' character may be used at the end of a line to specify line continuation. The functions specified in getnetgrent(3) should normally be used to access the netgroup database.(host, user, domain)
These functions operate on the db version of the netgroup (netgroup.db) file which can be generated using netgroup_mkdb. If that file is not present, and the system supports NIS, then the netgroup NIS maps are used. The NIS maps are also used if the netgroup file contains a + entry.
Lines that begin with a # are treated as comments.