"Dominic J. Eidson" <sauron@the-infinite.org> writes:
> I am trying to add another authentication mechanism to PostgreSQL... And,
> in doing that, I need to verify the existance of an user within PG. Short
> of hacking together code from verify_password(), is there any way to check
> if a user exists in postgresql?
If you're trying to do this from the postmaster, I think the only way is
to look at $PGDATA/global/pg_pwd, which is a flat-file version of
pg_shadow.
You'd be well advised to study the existing verification mechanisms in
src/backend/libpq/.
regards, tom lane