Re: commit: ldap/servers/slapd slappasswd.c

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Aaron Richton wrote:
> > > Omit trailing newline from generated password, so it may be directed
> > > to a file and used by commandline tools
> > >       
> > What about a "-n" (much like "sophisticated" echo implementations) to
> > avoid breaking existing usage?
> >     
>
> One could also consider the GNU ls dircolor model (--color=tty, the
> default): prettyprint to tty, straightforward output if redirected.
>
> I might be biased by my extremely infrequent use of slappasswd, but I
> could also see an argument towards holding this to RE24 if it's not "-n"
> entirely optional style. I'm sure somebody out there is going to
> need to change a script that already chomps the newline, it'd be nice to
> not stick them with that on a bugfix release.
>   

Since the existing versions of slappasswd didn't have an option to 
generate a random password, there's no backward compatibility issue 
here. There's no "existing usage" to break. As for script writers moving 
forward - shell command substitution doesn't care either way. It's 
trivial to add a "-n" option, of course, but I don't see it being 
necessary or even useful.

--
 -- Howard Chu
 Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
 Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc
 OpenLDAP Core Team            http://www.openldap.org/project/