C programmers would ask whether a null-terminated name would be acceptable
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Once I was tasked with doing QA testing for an app which was planned to initially go live in the states of Georgia and Tenessee. One of the required fields was the user's legal name. I therefore looked up the laws on baby names in those two states.
Georgia has simple rules where a child's forename must be a sequence of the 26 regular Latin letters.
Tenessee seemed to only require that a child's name was writable under stone writing system, which would imply any unicode code point is permissible.
At the time, I logged a bug that a hypothetical user born in Tenessee with a name consisting of a single emoji couldn't enter their legal name. I reckon it would also be legal to call a Tenessee baby 'John '.
Sounds like you did a thorough job as a QA tester. As a software engineer, I love to see it.
No, cause "John\nDoe" messes up my regex. Sorry, out of the question. I'm not good with regex.
why settle for \n when you can go for the stylish carriage return
¿Porqué no los dos? A nice \r\n, Windows style.
Gotta band it Windows tho, it just feels right, I want to enjoy my fake typewriter
Can I kill someone who wants to do this? How do I legally get away with it?
Plead permanent sanity. If I was the judge I would let you go.
Thanks bro
I gotchu
Na, names are about pronunciation (how you call someone). Written letters are an approximation of that. You can't pronounce a newline, so there's that.
Just pronounce \n as a glottal stop.
But differently spelled names are legally distinct.
John
(long pause)
Doe
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Sibling of Bobby Drop Tables
Y'all need to learn how to sanitize your inputs!
Not legal in Sweden. Our "IRS" must also accept the name and deem it legal.
I for one like this. As it stops some very stupid people to name their children some very stupid names. Such as "Adolf Hitler".
And yes. Someone did try to name their child this and they were appropriately stoped from doing it.
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A line break is a non-printable character. So it would only work in the scope of electronic storage. The minute it hits other media, the line break character is subject to how that media handles it’s presence, and then it is lost permanently from that step forward.
Plus, many input forms make use of validation that will just trim anything that isn’t a character or number, removing the line break character.
As someone with a very mildly unusual name, I can tell you that it doesn't matter whether a system could or could not meaningfully represent the name. Often the people or systems just refuse to acknowledge any deviation from what's expected. Sometimes databases are written to enforce arbitrary grammatical rules that make my name impossible to write, or the people using the systems will just "correct" the "error" without telling me. I don't mind that much but our normative systems just love to homogenise us.
Because sadly we live in a society, and normal names are required for the functioning of society.
No they're not. They're required for us to be catalogued and managed by a state, to our detriment and the enrichment of the ruling class.
"Normality" is a fucking scam that keeps your imagination in check, so you never look outside your assigned box and realise you don't have to belong to anyone.
You have no idea how much genocidal violence has been done to condition our society to accept a dystopic phrase like "normal names are required for the functioning of society".
Your mind has been caged.
A line break doesnt have to be electronic only. You just... start a new line on the paper.
If it were somehow legally allowed, the sanitization would be incorrect.
Not legal in Canada. Your legal name must use Latin characters only. This is a sore point for indigenous people.
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If elected president my first order of business will be to make all birth certificates fully unicode compatible.
Howdy friend, I'm ▒⟪♶⳽Ⰶ⮫☲Ⰱ∓✑ⲍ␝ⅼⓑ⊯⛝≋ⱚⵯ⿳➡⸷⋘⎋⛏⍫⣺⨼⛜⧄ⅈ⎥⦶⋣⩥⮯⨏⼧⁹⟤.
(ノ-_-)ノ~┻━┻ Miller
Y̴̥͉͕͌̀ǫ̴̗̅̕u̵̱̾̋͐̚ ̷̡͕͈͛̇h̴̳̱̘̆ä̶̼́̕ṽ̷̬͕è̷͓̰̔̌ ̸̪͋m̷͍͎͙̂́̔ͅy̷̰̘̎́̉ͅ ̷̳͒v̷̭̕o̷̢͚̟͇͒̃͐̕t̴̪̙͗̐͆́ë̶̦͗ ̵̗͌̅p̶̰̫͛̑r̷̨͛̏̈́͝e̷͇͍̋̚͜s̸̳͙̒͘î̶̞̍̍̋͜ͅd̴̰̭͚̞͗ě̶̯̖n̶̩̿̕t̶͎͉̂ ̵̦͂̍̀Z̵̧̲̦̹̾͋a̴̒̑ͅl̷͇̘̝̬͒̊͝ǵ̴̹̣͖'̷͂͜o̴̢͔̱̔ò̷̧͛!̷̦̎͑͆͘ ̵̺̼̜̃̑
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I have an apostrophe and it's super annoying as some companies see it as a SQL injection hack and sanitize it.
So I've received ID with Mc%20dole or they add a space in it. Or I'll get a work email with an apostrophe but I cant use it anywhere because sites have it disabled. And I've missed my flight because I changed my ticket once to add the apostrophe and the system just broke at the gate.
Worse yet many flight companies have "you will not be able to board if your ID doesn't exactly reflect your details" but their form doesn't allow it. Even most forms for card payments don't allow it even though it's the name on my card.
I have an apostrophe and it’s super annoying as some companies see it as a SQL injection hack and sanitize it.
My surname contains a character that's only present in the Polish alphabet. Writing my full name as is broke lots of systems, encoding, printed paperwork and even British naturalisation application on Home Office website. My surname was part of my username back at uni, and everytime I tried to login on Windows, it would crash underlying LDAP server, logging everyone in the classroom out and forcing ICT to restart the server.
I have an apostrophe
Scottish/Irish?
some companies see it as a SQL injection hack and sanitize it.
Which kind of apostrophe?
A straight apostrophe, fine - that can and does get used in valid SQL injection attacks. I would be disgusted at any input form that didn’t sanitize that.
But a curly apostrophe? Nothing should be filtering a curly apostrophe, as it has no function or use within SQL. So if you learn how to bring that up in alt codes (Windows, specifically), Key combos (Mac) or dead keys (Linux), as well as direct Unicode codes for most any Win/Mac/*Nix platform, you should be golden.
Unless the developer of that input form was a complete moron and made extra-tight validation.
Plus, knowing the inputs for a lot of extended UTF-8 characters not found on a normal keyboard is also a wee bit of a typing superpower.
Spent lots of effort to get names for my kids that avoid this. Swedish/French. It's harder than it sounds.
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