Re: btw, if dot in username, need colon in chown command

[Chuck Yerkes <chuck+obsd@2004.snew.com>]

Quoting Paul Pruett (ppruett@webengr.com):
> a little fyi on using dot in usernames....
> it does work on openbsd, but have to use colon with chown commands
...
> however this works
> chown   somename.lastname:  file.txt

Yeah, I removed the "." as a separator in my chown

I submitted a version that allowed "." but made it emit a warning
(figuring that a release of warning was enough to be able to
remove it later).

The powers that be were against the warning at that time (aug? or so).
And warnings can be annoying.

OTOH, it let to a removal of all uses of "user.group" in the startup
files and elsewhere, so the OS is ready for "." to not work anymore.


Perhaps a "chown -o user.group file"  for -old behavior?

I've made myself get in the habit of using ":" and its been handy
to have user and group names with . (eg. www.site.com that owns
web pages for that site).  Eventually the "." separator can die.

It's a simple whack in the source for chmod/chown.

Neat trick with the trailing : though.