Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!auspex!guy From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: GCOS field Message-ID: <552@auspex.UUCP> Date: 1 Dec 88 07:17:05 GMT References: <17641@adm.BRL.MIL> <8980@smoke.BRL.MIL> <8516@elsie.UUCP> <8990@smoke.BRL.MIL> <8517@elsie.UUCP> <9003@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1257@vsedev.VSE.COM> <7996@dasys1.UUCP> Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara Lines: 19 >In my flavor of unix, that's described as the "Comment" field. Well, sort of. Actually, in the 4.BSD "struct passwd", there are both "pw_comment" *and* "pw_gecos" fields; the former is set to point to a null string, and the latter is set to point to the GCOS/comment/full name/whatever field. The S5R3.1 one also has both those fields in "struct passwd"; it sets them both to point to the GCOS/comment/full name/whatever field. >Elsewhere in the old green books, I get the implicit, not explicit, >information that GCOS referred to a typesetting system at Murray Hill at >the time that Osanna & Co. were inventing troff. Actually, GCOS was the operating system on the machine on which the typesetting stuff ran. I think it was originally GECOS, for GE Csomething Operating System, for the GE 6*5 series ("*" replaceable by 3, and perhaps by other digits, except 4 - if you replace it with 4, it runs Multics instead). When Honeywell bought out GE's computer operation, they probably dropped the "E".