Its called standards, without them we would have difficulty in building
interoperable systems. A long time ago after careful consideration a
standards group decided that a numeric value in the first position would
serve a useful purpose.
Now we may have moved on in time and have all sorts of other standards and
rules and that restriction might not have any real relevance ... but there
has been so much developed utilizing this in some way that it would probably
be impossible to reverse without causing a lot more people than you grief.
The fact that you can ride roughshod over these (and other norms and
standards) is called flexibility. That is a seperate argument altogether - a
'well behaved' program to maintain this would have told you, but because you
have the flexibility to just go and add an invalid user by grafting it into
the file, well thats a teeny weeny bit unprotected wouldn't you say.
I'm sure you have already got the picture from other posters.
The message is - thats the rule and it really isnt tough to live with (once
you know).
-----Original Message-----
From: John Summerfield [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 09 November 1999 15:08
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: mandated charceters in usernames
> John Summerfield wrote:
>
> > > Why is it I cannot have a username such as 2bad yet can have bad2
> >
> > Because you didn't try hard enough?
>
> I did add the user by editting /etc/passwd '
> My question relates more to being able to do this by default.
> I see no reason, security or other that having a number beginning the
> username is a problem
It's a pretty common rule. Applies to every programming language I can
think of, and to other operating systems. Is it so hard to live with?
--
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.
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