Hey, Greg -- I agree with everything here except:

# The file format could be made to be text-based if desired, though there
# are some advantages to binary, or at least fixed-length, records, such
# as for what "last" does.  There's also the advantage that binary data of
# this form is much smaller....  Obviously in this modern day of non-VAX
# systems the data should probably be stored in network byte order if it's
# going to be binary on the disk.

Nonsense.  These files are germane to the machine in question -- there's
no reason to be byteward compatible, realistically speaking.

				--*greywolf;
--
NetBSD: My Computer Runs!