On unix systems, account entries often use a simple comma-delimited format called 'GECOS' or 'GCOS' in the comment field, to store more data then just real name. (phone, extention, etc). Currently, when you set up a new account, it takes the whole comment field as the default realname. What we really want is everything before the first comma. May also be an desirable for Mac OSX port.

add sspitzer to CC, this is the auto-fillin of the user's full name. One situation I'm concerned about is non-GCOS systems that have entered people's full names as "Lastname, First" - is there a way to work around that or somehow know that this is or isn't a "GCOS" system? Where can I read about GCOS? Is this stored in the passwd file?

"Lastname, First" entries in that field are very wrong. many other applications attempt to check for comma delimited text there. For the very few systems that have 'last, first', for some reason, having just their last name is better then having all of the other information. (ie, 'Smith' is better then 'Smith, John,107,555-5555,416-9826') If an application were to want "last, first", it would need to switch them itself. Note that on a Slackware Linux 7.0, new accounts are created by default with the GECOS field set to "real name,,,". This is also what 'chfn' will set the field to, if the user doesn't specify entries for the room number/phone prompts. someone should investigate on solaris, as well...i would assume GECOS is pretty standard there, too.

moving to future milestone.

Some systems allow an ampersand in the GCOS field, which represents the username, capitalized. For example: andrew::500:500:& Taylor:/home/andrew:/bin/bash Here the GCOS should be expanded to Andrew Taylor. This is documented in passwd(4) on Solaris.

patch looks good, except you can use nsCAutoString to avoid all the conversions back and forth between unicode and ASCII

*** Bug 55123 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

oh, cool. i couldn't remember "gecos" as the magic name for unix user info. good to see there's a fix in hand, too... adding keywords, cc. i'll review the patch tomorrow if possible.

marking rtm-. Not common enough to get into rtm and the user always has the ability to edit what we autofill if they are in this situation.

we should check this into the tip when someone gets a chance.

just a responce to 'not common enough'... just checked all the passwd files i have access to, a good 75% of user accounts on linux and solaris machines have gcos fields in them. thats fairly common, by my definition.

well, I just checked all the unix systems I have access to, and none of them used this system, so according to my sample space, this system doesn't exist :) I'll check the patch into the tip so it makes it for mozilla 1.0, but netscape is not taking this on their branch.

add seth for review, I'll be super-reviewer, then this will go into the trunk

massive reassign of account manager bugs -> sspitzer please feel free to put me back on the CC if you have any questions/comments

adding myself back to this bug so I can checkin when I get a review from seth.

the patch looks good, but can you correct / add comments to explain what these additional code does? once we do that, r=sspitzer

I forgot to add: "sorry for the delay on this. I've been focusing on RTM bugs."

ok, back to me, marking fixed. thanks seth.

fix now in, marking fixed.

no way this could get into rtm? seems like low-risk/very-high-profile to me... am i deluding myself?

deluded big time. especially since the work around is to go and edit the text field when it comes up.

*** Bug 61141 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

changing qa