On Wed, May 24, 2000 at 03:54:11PM -0400, Avi Green wrote:
> When I first studied Unix a few years ago, I read that one should use an
> asterisk to denote an impossible (i.e. unusable) password because
> asterisks are not in the set of ciphertext characters used by the Unix
> password encryption scheme.
Shouldn't make any difference. The output of any given system's
crypt() function is a constant-length string. If the password
field is a different length, then no cleartext string can
possibly encrypt to it.
>
> Also, "NP" is often used to denote an impossible password.
>
Which is why this is safe.
--
| | /\
|-_|/ > Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
| | /
to me, Charlie Brown represented the courage to be sincere in the face of
ridicule. he was NOT a loser.
thank you, Mr. Schulz.
- Robert C. Mayo
