Length of User names

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <1991Jun1.194721.25383 at thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> mouse at thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse) writes:
>Fortunately, it's not hard to do.  I once asked someone at Waterloo,
>which uses usernames >8 chars on their UNIX machines, how they did it,
>and was informed that you just need to change a couple of include files
>(<utmp.h> comes to mind) and recompile everything.
>Oh, you don't have source?  Then you've got problems.  A good example
>of why binary distributions are evil.

For an example of why hacking the system interface is harmful, consider
those applications that attempt to get usernames and provide only 8+1
characters of storage for them, because that was a known feature of the
operating system implementation.  Longer user names will break such
programs, and no it is NOT practical to find them all and change them.