Use the htpasswd utility to create the flat-files that store usernames and password for basic authentication of HTTP users. If htpasswd cannot access a file, such as not being able to write to the output file or not being able to read the file, it returns an error status and makes no changes.

-c

creates the passwdfile. If the passwdfile already exists, it is rewritten and truncated.

passwdfile

name of the file to contain the username and password.

username

the username to create in the passwdfile. If the username does not exist in this file, an entry is added. If it does exist, the password is changed.