Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi From: dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: User accounts Keywords: special characters Message-ID: <7500@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> Date: 30 May 89 21:26:55 GMT References: <317@umabco.UUCP> Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana Lines: 22 In article <317@umabco.UUCP> lwilson@umabco.UUCP (Lowell G. Wilson) writes: >...any reason why an >adminsitrator should stay away from special characters when creating >user accounts. 1. If network mail is sent to or from such an account, then most special characters will confuse mail software. Rumor has it that some mail software doesn't like dots in usernames either, even though these are supposed to be legal. 2. RCS doesn't like leading digits in usernames. You may come across other programs that make overly restrictive assumptions about usernames. 3. If you are using the ~user syntax to make csh find somebody's home directory, a special character in the username will cause incorrect parsing. (I didn't try this with ksh, but the same problem will likely occur.) -- Rahul Dhesi UUCP: ...!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi Career change search is on -- ask me for my resume