From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!npois!cbosgd!mark
Newsgroups: net.news
Title: Re: Choose better site names, guys
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.3133
Posted: Wed Feb 16 15:55:54 1983
Received: Mon Feb 21 08:26:18 1983
References: <362@hpda.UUCP>

Re:
	1) Site names must be unique.
	2) Site names must be the same length.
	3) Site names must be no more than 7 characters.
Close but no cigar.  The real rules are
	1) Site names must be unique.
	2) Site names must be unique in their 7 characters.
There is no requirement for site names to be the same length.
There is a bug in many UUCP's that barfs if one site happens to
be a prefix of another (we hit this one with cbosg and cbosgd),
and it's easy to fix.  In /usr/src/cmd/uucp/anlwrk.c, find the
routine "getwrk".  Near the beginning there is a call to "prefix".
Just augment this check to also insist that one file name is
exactly 5 chars longer than the other.

Note that there are many long names on the net, e.g. microsoft,
ubc-vision, genradbolton, rochester, etc.  It's just that UUCP
truncates all names to 7 chars (presumably to leave room for the
"C." and "X1234" on the ends of the filenames).  You can have longer
names, and mail will use the longer name, so the chopping is supposed
to be invisible.  Kind of like the old C compilers chopping all names
to 8 chars - this didn't stop anybody from using longer names.  The
real problem is that the documentation doesn't explain this, so a lot
of people think they have to limit to 7 chars.

By the way,since (2) implies (1), there is really only one rule.

The new Internet domain naming scheme will allow much longer names,
e.g. cbosgd could be d.osg.cb.btl.uucp if we wanted.  (How this
interfaces with UUCP is unclear - hopefully the answer is the same
way the automobile interfaced with the stagecoach.)  And if you're
all worried about having to type these long names, that's what
macros are for.  Let your mail software do it for you.