marcotte@acsu.buffalo.edu (Brian Marcotte) (10/13/90)
In article <1284@n_kulcscs.kuleuven.ac.be> dirk@cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Dirk Craeynest) writes:
->Elm interprets an '&' in the GCOS field of an entry in the password file
->as the corresponding user name _in upper case_.
->
->We would like to propose to use the same interpretation as finger(1)
->does, i.e. capitalizing _only the first character_ of the user name.
->
->What do other people think?
I'd like to see this fixed to. There is no reason to have it in ALL
upper case. I have never seen another program that does this.
- Brian Marcotte
taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) (10/13/90)
> Elm interprets an '&' in the GCOS field of an entry in the password file > as the corresponding user name _in upper case_. Interesting behaviour... in the original code (initialize.c): if (pass->pw_gecos[i] == '&') { full_username[j] = '\0'; strcat(full_username, expand_logname()); j = strlen(full_username); } and further down in the code... char *expand_logname() { /** Return logname in a nice format (for expanding "&" in the /etc/passwd file) **/ static char buffer[SLEN]; register int i; if (strlen(username) == 0) buffer[0] = '\0'; else { buffer[0] = toupper(username[0]); for (i=1; username[i] != '\0'; i++) buffer[i] = tolower(username[i]); buffer[i] = '\0'; } return( (char *) buffer); } It *used* to do what you're asking for... From the peanut gallery, -- Dave Taylor Intuitive Systems Mountain View, California taylor@limbo.intuitive.com or {uunet!}{decwrl,apple}!limbo!taylor
dirk@triton.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Dirk Craeynest) (10/13/90)
Elm interprets an '&' in the GCOS field of an entry in the password file as the corresponding user name _in upper case_. We would like to propose to use the same interpretation as finger(1) does, i.e. capitalizing _only the first character_ of the user name. We don't like the conversion to upper case, so we mentioned this to the elm development group some time ago, and Syd Weinstein answered: > Definition of GCOS and & is that you put in the user name in all > upper case where the & is. I don't like it, but its the definition. Recently, we were confronted with the same issue in another context, and therefore searched in our manuals for VAX, DECstation, SUN and Sequent for a definition of the exact meaning of '&' in the GCOS field. We looked at manual pages for chfn(1), finger(1), passwd(1), passwd(5), etc. but couldn't find anything re. capitalizing. The only mention of '&' is in passwd(5), where it's defined as "insert login name" - no mention of capitalizing at all. What that leaves us with, is just "finger does it that way"; but the most decisive argument is, it's the most logical thing to do... What do other people think? Dirk Craeynest | domain: dirk@cs.kuleuven.ac.be The Absynt project: Semantics | bitnet: dirk@blekul60.bitnet Directed Compiler Construction | uucp: dirk@kulcs.uucp Katholieke Universiteit Leuven | ...!mcsun!ub4b!kulcs!dirk Department of Computer Science | phone: ++32(0)16-201015 x3555 Celestijnenlaan 200 A | fax: ++32(0)16-205308 B-3001 Leuven (Heverlee), Belgium | telex: 23674 kuleuv b