Re: 23.0.60; uid problems on w32

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Jason Rumney wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:54:56 +0200
> > > From: "Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <address@hidden>
> > > CC: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> > >
> > > Maybe it would help to use a full internal representation in Emacs 
> > > that are simplified when talking with external applications?
> > >     
> >
> > There are places in Emacs as well that expect Posix behavior.  And
> > there's some merit in being compatible with Cygwin, too.
> >
> > Anyway, if someone wants to volunteer to do what you want, I won't
> > object.
> >   
>
> There is a function user-real-uid that may be able to be extended to 
> contain the full id. Currently it is documented as returning a float or 
> int, neither of which will contain a SID without losing precision. We'd 
> have to check the users first. If elisp had a bignum type, it would be 
> the best choice, as a cons cell will require different code for 
> processing it. But before embarking on this, I'd like to see a case that 
> actually needs it, as there are many other areas where we could be 
> spending our limited resources.

You are really right that we have to consider where to use our limited 
resource. One reason to do this change however might be that it concerns 
security things (file owner). But I am not sure it actually matters.