Why is `user-full-name' returning “”?

Question

I'm running Emacs on a linux system and the function user-full-name, when called with no arguments, always returns an empty string.

How can I fix this?

I assume it's something I need to configure on my user account, maybe an environment variable.

(The variable user-login-name works fine.)

jch · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-22 20:05:47Z

The function user-full-name with no arguments returns the value of the variable user-full-name. This variable is initialised:

Therefore, you can do one of the following:

set the Gecos field of your passwd entry using one of the chfn or usermod commands;
set your user name in the NAME environment variable in your shell's initialisation file;
set the user-full-name variable in your Emacs' initialisation file.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-22 01:24:42Z

4

Google is your friend. =/

$ chfn -f "Full Name"

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answered Dec 18, 2014 at 21:42

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