Re: OpenSSH: spaces in user name

"Richard E. Silverman" <res@xxxxxxxx> writes:

"Unruh" == Unruh <unruh-spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Unruh> "Nico Kadel-Garcia" <nkadel@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>> "Chuck" <skilover_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:PpGRf.16809$wH5.4757@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>> Michael Heiming wrote:
>>>> Shrug, spaces in username are one of the worst things I could
>>>> think of for a username, could well be a M$ "invention"?
>>>>
>>> It is.

>> It's tied to the "let the user name use anything they want, and
>> even encourage the use of their real names" approach to the world.

Unruh> So why can't I put carriage returns and backspaces and single
Unruh> quotes and double quotes into my name. Seesh, the unwarranted
Unruh> arrogant abridgement of my freedom to do anything I want! -:)

For the record, I completely disagree with all of you. The computer
exists to make work easier for people. If the natural name for a folder
sitting on my desktop is, "SSH Talk," I do not want to have to name it
"SSH_Talk", or "SSH-Talk," or "SSH+Talk," or some other awkward, unsightly
approximation just to satisfy the deficiencies of someone's software
design. Especially when the restrictions come from the impoverished
syntax of a decades-old command language that has exactly no relevance to
my life or work today.

It is not a problem of the software, it is the problem that you are
overloading the space. Space is a word delimiter in English and in computer
languages. In computer terms, such a delimiter plays a very particular
role. In your case you want it to either be a character in a name, or a
delimiter, with no differentiation between the two. That is confusing to
humans but even more confusing to the computer.
Now, you can of course add an extra letter to tell the computer to "Now use
space as a character ( your \ ) instead of as a delimiter. But
SSH\ Talk is even uglier than SSH_Talk or SSHTalk.

You can of course do that but it is ugly and more importantly highly
confusing to the user. Which is the space this time, a delimiter or a
character.

Note that you have a similar problem with the '. "O'Donnel's Recipie" is a
possible name for a file, but again you are overloading the ', as both a
character and as a string delimiter.

It is always a good idea to keep ideas separate. Delimiters should not be
confusable with a character.

Besides, on a practical level, I do not find it a problem. Bash
completion automatically escapes filename characters that are special to
it. I use "find -print0 | xargs -0" (which is the way it ought to work,
anyway). Etc.
Do you really advocate carriage returns as possible characters in a name?
I might decide that
This
is
my
file.
is a reasonable name for my file. Do you advise fixing the software so that
it is a valid filename?



Fix the software, don't "fix" the people.

While people can usually work their way around ambiguity of expressin, it
is probably not a good idea to encourage it in computers. Many a war has
been fought over ambiguity. And encouraging people to use ambiguous names
for things on computers is not something that I would want to see happen.


--
Richard Silverman
res@xxxxxxxx

.

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