In message <199507261115.HAA10732@Collatz.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>, der Mouse writes:
> > but it isn't hard to make the other databases also understand a + in
> > them.  or, as i've suggested many times before, @ for hesiod.
> 
> This makes me uneasy.  My reaction is "what if you want + or @ in a
> username?", which seems unlikely.  But I've found good uses for
> unlikely-sounding things often enough that I'm not willing to enshrine
> as dogma that there is no use for them.
> 

Hey, for all those people that think + and @ are unusual, I have a small
story for you.  The local admin dude (VMS admin), has a naming scheme for
all the accounts on the VMS boxes he runs.  Any automagically created
accounts (students mostly), start with a $.  He was willing to limit the
LENGTH of the names, but he still wanted the $.  Have you ever tried using
that character?  Not pretty.  (I realize that \$ will work in most cases).

NOTE: In the SMTP RFC, the $ is a legal character to use for an email
address.  (I didn't say that it was smart...)


> It also raises the spectre of running out of special characters.  + for
> yp, @ for hesiod, and : is taken for other uses...it isn't going to
> take very many more distributed databases before we start having to
> look hard for special characters to use.  Perhaps we need another field
> in master.passwd?  :-7
> 

Such as?  For what?  (I don't follow you here... ;-) )

--Toby.
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