Re: unsigned uid_t

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2001 at 06:14:22PM +0200, Moritz Schulte wrote:
> This is because the IDs are handled as unsigned ints; GNU Libc says:
> 
>  - Data Type: uid_t
>      This is an integer data type used to represent user IDs.  In the
>      GNU library, this is an alias for `unsigned int'.
> 
> But, get*id() are returning -1 (signed) (-> 4294967295 (unsigned)) for
> the nouser.
> 
> Should that be fixed?  If yes, how? Should we use a signed uid_t or
> would that violate a standard?

I downloaded draft 6 The Austin Common Standards Revision Group
(http://www.opengroup.org/austin/), what will become the new posix standard.
It says uid_t and gid_t should be integers, but it doesn't say that it
has to be signed or unsigned. Changing uid_t and gid_t to signed ints
shouldn't cause any problems as far as I can see.

Jeroen Dekkers