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On 15 Dec 2015 15:56, Ulrich Mueller wrote: |
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> >>>>> On Tue, 15 Dec 2015, Mike Frysinger wrote: |
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> |
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> > a flat text file akin to /etc/passwd is not readable. xml is readable. |
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> |
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> ESR's case study about the password file format seems to disagree: |
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> http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/ch05s01.html#id2901332 |
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i don't generally find anything ESR has to say useful, and his code even |
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less so |
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> I think the name:password:uid:gid:gecos:directory:shell format is |
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> readable well enough for human eyes. |
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having looked at way too many of these, i disagree. it's harder (imo) to |
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scan due to the lack of alignment, it's more of a pita to deal with defaults, |
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and it doesn't permit for additional metadata like i already quoted (the |
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defunct field). |
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> Certainly it is machine readable; |
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> even with standard tools like fgetpwent(3) (or its equivalent in other |
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> programming languages). |
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again, not portable. the format proposed is also trivial to parse by |
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python and awk. |
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-mike |
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