From owner-freebsd-current Wed May 12 11:42:28 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from pi.yip.org (yip.org [142.154.7.242]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38CCF15225 for ; Wed, 12 May 1999 11:42:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from melange@yip.org) Received: from localhost (melange@localhost) by pi.yip.org (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id OAA24589; Wed, 12 May 1999 14:42:10 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from melange@yip.org) Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 14:42:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Bob K X-Sender: melange@localhost To: Mark Murray Cc: Christopher Michaels , freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: dots in usernames? In-Reply-To: <199905121833.UAA05194@greenpeace.grondar.za> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 12 May 1999, Mark Murray wrote: > Bob K wrote: > > Well, I did some reading through rfc821, and an email address is defined > > as follows: > > Email addresses != Usernames. What this suggests to me is that having > an _alias_ (say) Mark.Murray to markmurray in /etc/aliases is OK. Sigh. Yes, I know. However, here's the reasoning behind not having dots in usernames according to passwd(5): The login name must never begin with a hyphen (``-''); also, it is strongly suggested that neither upper-case characters nor dots (``.'') be part of the name, as this tends to confuse mailers. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Since any mailer that can't handle a dot in an email address that consists of login@host is not compliant with RFC 821, I'm thinking "Hey! Why not make the change?" I've tested it on my -stable system here, and so far there's been no incompatibilities (but then, I only tested a few things: see the original email I sent - which is the point of putting something in -current before stable :) melange@yip.org - Mustard gas: The kids love it! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message