Date: Fri, 24 Oct 1997 22:11:59 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <199710250511.WAA07645@adit.ap.net>
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To: yvp AT bigfoot DOT com (Yves Pouplard), djgpp AT delorie DOT com
From: Nate Eldredge <eldredge AT ap DOT net>
Subject: Re: Answer to the prime question :-) (Note: message is in
  English)
Precedence: bulk

At 10:51  10/22/1997 GMT, Yves Pouplard wrote:
>Tiens, j'ai decouvert un indice corroborant le fait que
>le GNU se prend pour dieu (et pas seulement Bill Gates). Dans "le
>guide du routard galactique" ("the hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy"
>pour les anglophones), la reponse a la question primordiale etait "42"
>(bien que la question elle-meme n'etait pas exactement definie), eh
>bien, quand je tape la commande "id" sous Dos (qui est une commande de
>Djgpp, issue d'Unix), j'obtiens la reponse (que je n'ai absolument pas
>trafiquee) :
>uid=42(dosuser), gid=42(dos)
>ce qui me laisse pantois. Pas vous ?
Sorry, but I don't speak French either. But yes, many functions which are
meaningless on DOS, including getgid(), getuid(), etc., return 42 as the
user or group ID. This maps to a user named `dosuser'. So of course this
shows up in the `id' command. Rather clever, IMHO.

Nate Eldredge
eldredge AT ap DOT net