Re: What if the author field in a RCS file is a numeral as in 12345

[Paul Eggert]

"Aaron S. Hawley" <address@hidden> writes:

>     $ grep author RCS/food,v
>     date    2003.06.13.16.12.59;    author 8675309; state Exp;
>     $ rlog RCS/food,v
>     rlog: RCS/food,v:9: missing author
>     rlog aborted
> 
> my guess is the problem is in the lexer, but i'm having trouble
> decrypting anything from these sections of the code.

In RCS 5.7, a user name must contain at least one non-digit.

Several other traditional Unix utilities require user names to contain
at least one non-digit, so RCS is in good company here.  However, it
shouldn't be hard (as you observed) to modify it to support integer
user names, at least if you don't care whether your RCS files are
interoperable with anybody else's tools.