Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule hga@xxxxxx (11 Aug 2019 14:35 UTC)
Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule Lassi Kortela (11 Aug 2019 15:10 UTC)
Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule Lassi Kortela (11 Aug 2019 15:15 UTC)
Re: gecos field naming (was Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule) Lassi Kortela (11 Aug 2019 15:48 UTC)
gecos parser implementation Lassi Kortela (11 Aug 2019 17:30 UTC)
Re: gecos parser implementation John Cowan (12 Aug 2019 04:07 UTC)
Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule Lassi Kortela (12 Aug 2019 12:02 UTC)
Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule Lassi Kortela (12 Aug 2019 11:52 UTC)
Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule Lassi Kortela (12 Aug 2019 12:21 UTC)
Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule Lassi Kortela (12 Aug 2019 13:44 UTC)
Timezone files Lassi Kortela (12 Aug 2019 14:00 UTC)
GECOS field parsing Lassi Kortela (17 Aug 2019 08:52 UTC)
Re: GECOS field parsing Lassi Kortela (17 Aug 2019 09:11 UTC)
Re: GECOS field parsing Lassi Kortela (17 Aug 2019 09:16 UTC)
Re: GECOS field parsing Lassi Kortela (17 Aug 2019 09:35 UTC)
Re: GECOS field parsing Lassi Kortela (17 Aug 2019 09:56 UTC)
Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule Lassi Kortela (12 Aug 2019 12:39 UTC)

Re: gecos field naming (was Re: Remaining things to remove mostly per the 80/20 rule) Lassi Kortela 11 Aug 2019 15:48 UTC

>>>> 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.

Speaking as someone who started my computing life on Windows
(<https://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/microsoft-achiever.html>), calling it
the GECOS field is completely baffling :) Though we should definitely
mention that name it in the SRFI text.

Here's a survey of how it's described in passwd(5) manual pages:

Linux: GECOS -- This field (sometimes called the "comment field") is
optional and used only for informational purposes. Usually, it contains
the full username. Some programs (for example, finger(1)) display
information from this field.

MacOS: gecos -- User's full name. The gecos field normally contains the
user's full name.  Note that Mac OS X differs from some other operating
systems, where the gecos field may contain other comma-separated
information about the user.

FreeBSD: gecos -- General information about the user. The gecos field
normally contains comma (`,') separated subfields as follows:
- name     user's full name
- office  user's office number
- wphone  user's work phone number
- hphone  user's home phone number
The full name may contain an ampersand (`&') which will be replaced by
the capitalized login name when the gecos field is displayed or used by
various programs such as finger(1), sendmail(8), etc. The office and
phone number subfields are used by the finger(1) program, and possibly
other applications.

DragonFly BSD: ditto

OpenBSD: ditto

NetBSD: ditto

Solaris: gcos-field -- is the user's real name, along with information
to pass along in a mail-message heading. (It is called the gcos-field
for historical reasons.) An ``&'' (ampersand) in this field stands for
the login name (in cases where the login name appears in a user's real
name).

Minix: The gecos field can be set by the user. It is expected to be a
comma separated list of personal data where the first item is the full
name of the user.

AIX: GECOS -- Full name of the user

HP-UX: reserved gecos ID -- The gecos field may contain the following
identification: user's full name, office location, extension, and home
phone. The gecos field can be set by use of the chfn command and is
displayed by the finger command (see chfn(1) and finger(1)). These two
commands assume the information in this field is in the order listed
above. A portion of the user's real name can be represented in the gecos
field by an & character, which some utilities (including finger) expand
by substituting the login name for it and shifting the first letter of
the login name to uppercase.