On Sat, 4 Jan 1997, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> [ On Fri, January 3, 1997 at 17:01:50 (-0500), Brian Reichert wrote: ]
> > Subject: ampersand in GECOS field
> >
> > A behavior I've noted with other MTAs is to treat ampersands in
> > the GECOS field as magic. By magic, I mean that it it replaced
> > with the username field, with a first character in uppercase.
>
> I don't think this feature is formally defined in any standard relating
> to e-mail, but it is a "necessary" feature for BSD systems which support
> it as a documented feature.
>
> For example from the passwd(5) manual page on SunOS-4:
>
> gcos-field is the user's real name, along with informa-
> tion to pass along in a mail-message heading.
> It is called the gcos-field for historical
> reasons. A & in this field stands for the
> login name (in cases where the login name ap-
> pears in a user's real name).
Never noticed that before. It's the same in SunOS-5 (Solaris 2) in fact.
The only time Exim makes use of the gecos field is when it has to
construct a From or Sender header for the calling user. You can use the
gecos_name and gecos_pattern options to control how it does this. (Some
OS stop the "name" at the first colon, for example, and put other stuff
thereafter.) However, there isn't any way at present to get hold of the
caller's login name to insert.
(a) I will look at as many Unixes as I can to see if this "&" usage is
common, and if it is, I suppose Exim should support it.
(b) In any case, I can add a new expansion variable giving the login
name of the process that called Exim.
(c) Hmm. Why does Exim call it "gecos" rather than "gcos"? Where did I get
that from, I wonder? I'll check up on that too.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
