On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 05:21:34PM +0200, Ferenc Wágner wrote:
Michael Stone <mst...@debian.org> writes:
On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 04:15:44PM +0200, you wrote:
Michael Stone <mst...@debian.org> writes:
It would not--POSIX does not disallow the . syntax.
(This is not my point, but in my reading
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/chown.html
does not allow it: "The BSD syntax user[. group] was changed to user[:
group] in this volume of POSIX.1-2017...")
The new syntax was introduced.
No new syntax was introduced, "the BSD syntax was *changed*". But this
isn't from the normative section, so nevermind.
BSD != POSIX. At one point the standard mandated the original BSD
syntax, then the standard changed to mandate a new syntax. In all cases
POSIX specifies a *subset* of behavior of standard utilities, so
anything that isn't expressly forbidden is simply undefined;
POSIX-compliant implementations are required to support the new syntax,
but nothing is said about supporting the old syntax. The lines you keep
quoting are there to explain the rationale for why the new syntax was
invented, nothing more.
It does not say anything like "MUST NOT accept . syntax".
Nor like MUST NOT accept ! syntax or % syntax or @ syntax or ..:)
Correct, those would all be valid (though unlikely to be implemented
because there isn't a reason to do so).
Rather, I meant that adduser could be configured *by default* to not
require --force-badname for adding perfectly valid POSIX user names.
It can be, someone's simply decided not to. I think that's dumb, but
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
OK, I'll link our discussion into #604242 to see if anything can change
now.
FWIW, debian seems to be fairly unique in deciding that dot-names can't
be supported. They work just fine by default on fedora, openbsd, etc.,
all of which support the legacy chown syntax without all this
hand-wringing...
Mike Stone
