Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!sgi!arisia!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Password security
Message-ID: <756@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 27 Nov 88 07:16:01 GMT
References: <4449@sneaky.TANDY.COM> <14128@conexch.UUCP> <517@auspex.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Distribution: na
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 14

In article <517@auspex.UUCP> guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) writes:
> >>- Certain characters are untypable in passwords:  nul, newline, backspace, 
> >>  and line-kill characters, and possibly ^S, ^Q, and ^M.
> >This is incorrect.  Virtually any character can be used in passwords

>certain characters *are*, in fact, untypable
>in passwords, including all the ones listed above.  Yes, Virginia, there
>are UNIX systems that don't have "literal-next".

System V has back-slash, which will quote the character-delete and line-kill
characters.  When I use a V.3 system here, I have erase=^h, kill=^u, eof=^z.
A test program which calls getpass(3) and prints the result in hex shows that
I can use all three of these characters.  But I can't use my intr or quit
characters.  I do not know whether this will work in V.2, but I expect it will.