Perry says (slightly reordered):

> "Neil J. McRae" writes:
> > On Thu, 1 Aug 1996 03:25:27 +0200 
> >  Hubert Feyrer <feyrer@smaug.mit.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > I've actually done all of this, is it something that should be in the tree?
> > 
> > My code gives usernames up to 36 chars long.
>
> I think that login name size should be set by a #define in something
> in /usr/include, instead of being constantly redefined throughout code
> all over the system. That way, we can change the length just by
> changing the one #define and recompiling.


This is not a bad idea.

Picking the default too high is a bad idea though; login names are
stored in lots of files, e.g. the wtmp, and if you make them
ridiculously long you'll waste a lot of space.

If i recall, BSDI defaults to allowing 16 character login names.  Is
there any reason we need to, by default, allow more?


cgd