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Date:      Fri, 12 Oct 2001 13:56:36 -0700
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <cristjc@earthlink.net>
To:        Yar Tikhiy <yar@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Valid user name
Message-ID:  <20011012135636.L293@blossom.cjclark.org>
In-Reply-To: <20011012145227.D46577@snark.rinet.ru>; from yar@FreeBSD.ORG on Fri, Oct 12, 2001 at 02:52:28PM %2B0400
References:  <20011012145227.D46577@snark.rinet.ru>

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On Fri, Oct 12, 2001 at 02:52:28PM +0400, Yar Tikhiy wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> Now adduser(8) and pw(8) differ in what a valid user name is.
> Adduser(8) enforces a user name to match the /^[a-z0-9_][a-z0-9_\-]*$/
> regexp.  OTOH, pw(8) uses the Good Old Wrong Way of checking validity--
> it checks a user name against a list of *invalid* characters.
> 
> I'm going to fix pw(8) so its view on valid user names is consistent
> with that of adduser(8).
> 
> Is there any reason to omit the period ('.') from the list of valid
> characters?  With the period included, the list would conform to
> POSIX's definition of a valid user name.

The historical reason '.' is avoided is because it breaks,

  # chown user.group file

Syntax. See the COMPATIBILITY section of chown(8).
-- 
Crist J. Clark                     |     cjclark@alum.mit.edu
                                   |     cjclark@jhu.edu
http://people.freebsd.org/~cjc/    |     cjc@freebsd.org

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