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I was just registering with a web site when I started to wonder what the whole thing about not allowing spaces in usernames is about.. I've always made the restriction myself with the work I do but can't actualy think of any good reason for the restriction.. anyone have any insights or thoughts?
Traditionally usernames were used as the basis of filesystem paths - so it was a restriction. With applications this is not the case, so if spaces are disallowed I can't think of any good reason other than long standing convention.
Maugrim_The_Reaper wrote:Traditionally usernames were used as the basis of filesystem paths - so it was a restriction. With applications this is not the case, so if spaces are disallowed I can't think of any good reason other than long standing convention.
personally i didn't know this BUT i don't allow login usernames to have spaces but i do allow display names to have it tho.
A lot of my early internet activity included user webspace in the format domain.com/user/~maugrim. Seemed pretty obvious from thereon in. It should of course still be enforced in any application assigning userspaces...
i don't allow login usernames to have spaces but i do allow display names to have it tho.
A lot of folk do - traditions are hard to evade. Look at my own username , I automatically use underscores in my username all the time out of habit. But there's no reason for a username not to be allowed have spaces, or any other valid printable character imaginable.
What's kind of funny is you CAN have directories with spaces on linux and have been able too for a while. Although it still doesn't allow you to do it for user names.
One reason I could think of last night was email addresses.. which would be at least one reason why Unix based systems certainly wouldn't allow spaces. Also if you planned on giving your users email addresses your wouldn't want them registering with usernames that are illegal for email.