From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: What shall we do with the GECOS field again? Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 09:32:38 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: References: <20050919134838.GC2903@pasky.or.cz> <7vll1trqiq.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Petr Baudis , git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Mon Sep 19 18:34:50 2005 Return-path: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1EHOZe-00025J-1j for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 18:32:58 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932440AbVISQcz (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Sep 2005 12:32:55 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932462AbVISQcz (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Sep 2005 12:32:55 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:50874 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932440AbVISQcz (ORCPT ); Mon, 19 Sep 2005 12:32:55 -0400 Received: from shell0.pdx.osdl.net (fw.osdl.org [65.172.181.6]) by smtp.osdl.org (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id j8JGWhBo019447 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NO); Mon, 19 Sep 2005 09:32:44 -0700 Received: from localhost (shell0.pdx.osdl.net [10.9.0.31]) by shell0.pdx.osdl.net (8.13.1/8.11.6) with ESMTP id j8JGWcCY001062; Mon, 19 Sep 2005 09:32:41 -0700 To: Junio C Hamano In-Reply-To: <7vll1trqiq.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0 required=5 tests= X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63-osdl_revision__1.45__ X-MIMEDefang-Filter: osdl$Revision: 1.115 $ X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.36 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Mon, 19 Sep 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote: > > What do popular MUAs do to come up with the real-name fields? > Don't they face the same problem, trying to using GECOS? Since I have my pine installed in git, I could git grep it. It says /* full name is all chars up to first ',' (or whole gcos, if no ',') */ /* replace any & with logname in upper case */ I don't know why the & rule, but there you have it.. The Perl User::pwent module seems to agree, btw (also about '&'): "Interpretation of the gecos field varies between systems, but traditionally holds 4 comma-separated fields containing the user's full name, office location, work phone number, and home phone number. An & in the gecos field should be replaced by the user's properly capitalized login name." I still worry about names of the type "Torvalds, Linus", but maybe that's just not an issue. Linus