Resolving wordpress usernames and passwords programatically?

Hi every1.

I’m hacking together a bit of a hybrid system that uses wordpress for CMS stuff and a custom-build section for other stuff (to keep it brief). I don’t really like the idea of having 2 databases (and thus, 2 logins) though and was wondering if it were possible for me to be able to resolve a WordPress username and password in one of my own PHP scripts? I don’t necessarily need to go as deep as unencrypting and encrypting WP passwords manually – if I could just know what functions I need to call to perhaps save a new password and check a given UID + password against the WP database, it’d be cake…

But yeah, not too sure where to look for that stuff. Any advice?

Thanks guys.