Re: What shall we do with the GECOS field again?

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Sep 19, 2005, 16:32 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0509190924280.9106@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vll1trqiq.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

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