What is the origin of the nine-character limit for name fields found in some clients?

[drewtwo99]

@Musicat

See gotpasswords’ explanation, above. The limitation may be a record limit, and records are composed of multiple fields which cannot add up to more than the record allows. In this case, each field may be shorter than ideal, but the programmer had to compromise somewhere, and thought 9 was enough, but 10 was too many. Setting the length of something in high-level languages and/or databases is not constrained by powers of 2.

What I meant was that 8 characters would be an expected limit to come across in multiple different systems, as the OP indicated. But coming across 9 all the time seems highly coincidental, if it isn’t really a fundamental thing and just a choice of the programmer. That’s all I meant.