gecos field naming (was Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule)
hga@xxxxxx 11 Aug 2019 15:28 UTC
> From: Lassi Kortela <xxxxxx@lassi.io>
> Date: Sunday, August 11, 2019 10:16 AM
>>> I further advocate along with Lassi that pw_gecos from the passwd
>>> struct be added to the SRFI in the user-info record. We could call it
>>> either full-name or full-name-field, the latter suggestion because
>>> other stuff has been added to it in times past.
>> One more possibility is "comment field".
> Or "title" or "description" or "display-name".
On the other hand, we will have to note that it's the gecos field, since
plenty of people know it by name, even if they don't know that it stands
for the General Electric Operating System -> General Comprehensive OS
when GE's mainframe line was tragically bought by Honeywell. GECOS
mainframes supplied the line printers for early instances of UNIX at
Bell Labs, thus a passwd entry was needed, and later repurposed.
- Harold