Password encryption

Hi everyone,

I am trying to automate the bulk adding of users. I am currently doing an
insert into "person" and a matching insert into "staff". All seems to be
working except for password. How are these encrypted?

I can either setup users with a blank password or put in a pre-encrypted
password. If I do copy a password from another user to use as a default,
then the newly inserted user can't change their password. They can login but
the password change fails.

How can I take a plaintext password from a file and encrypt it so that it
can be inserted into the db?

All assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards
Andrew Higgs