Why are dots in username & groupname no longer allowed?

[mailing-lists at hughesjr.com (Johnny Hughes)]

On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 11:09 +0000, Will McDonald wrote:
> On 06/01/06, Johnny Hughes <mailing-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I disagree ... not that it matters what I think.  If chown and chgrp
> > allow dots to seperate user and group, I don't think they should not be
> > allowed in user names (or at least this should be a major factor to
> > consider).
> 
> "I don't think they should not be allowed", is that double negative
> intentional? :)

Accident ... I don't think they should be allowed :)

> 
> I think '.' as a separator for chown etc. is a GNU thing. I seem to
> remember Solaris only accepts ':'.
> 

right ... if this was solaris, dots would be ok :)

but ... I still think dots should not be used.  I can see the benefit
too though.

> http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/cgi-bin/man?chown+1
> 

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