That command outputs a list of usernames on the system.
cut
is a command used to process text according to columns.
-d:
tells the command that columns are delimited by the :
character.
-f1
tells the command to display only the first field. /etc/passwd
is the file it is to read data from.
The /etc/passwd
file contains a line for each user. Each line has columns separated by :
the first of which is the username.
It will only display accounts defined locally on the machine. If the machine is configured to retrieve account information from a network service, there may be more accounts than those you can find in /etc/passwd
.