[comp.mail.elm] Elm and & in GCOS field of passwd file

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
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