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From: dirk@triton.cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Dirk Craeynest)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Elm and & in GCOS field of passwd file
Message-ID: <1284@n_kulcscs.kuleuven.ac.be>
Date: 13 Oct 90 04:43:37 GMT
Sender: news@cs.kuleuven.ac.be
Reply-To: dirk@cs.kuleuven.ac.be (Dirk Craeynest)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science (K.U.Leuven)
Lines: 32

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
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