Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!boulder!stan!dce
From: dce@stan.UUCP (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Undocumented -s option to crypt
Message-ID: <475@salgado.stan.UUCP>
Date: 19 Feb 89 17:38:01 GMT
References: <13030004@eecs.nwu.edu>
Reply-To: dce@salgado.UUCP (David Elliott)
Organization: Solbourne Computer Inc., Longmont, Colorado
Lines: 16

In article <13030004@eecs.nwu.edu> naim@eecs.nwu.edu (Naim Abdullah) writes:
>What is the purpose and functionality of the -s option to crypt(1) ?
>Has it always been there or did Berkeley add it ?

I remember it being in 4.2BSD and adding it to the documentation in
UTek.  All it really does is to modify the key so that the data is
encrypted differently.

I would guess that the folks at Berkeley were having problems with
people looking over their shoulders or running the clist capture
program, so they could alias 'crypt' to 'crypt -s' and snoops seeing
them type 'crypt' would try without luck.

-- 
David Elliott		...!pyramid!boulder!stan!dce
"Splish splash, I was rakin' in the cash"  -- Eno