Quoting http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-November/050049.html:
Python doesn't promise to return a postive integer for id(), although it may have been nicer if it did. It's dangerous to change that now, because some code does depend on the "32 bit-ness as a signed integer" accident of CPython's id() implementation on 32-bit machines. For example, code using struct.pack(), or code using one of ZODB's specialized int-key BTree types with id's as keys.
All Tim was saying is that you can't /change/ builtin_id() because of backwards compatibiliity with Zope and struct.pack(). You are free to create a positive_id() function, and request its inclusion into builtins (low probability; people don't like doing that). Heck, you are even free to drop it in your local site.py implementation. But changing the current function is probably a no-no.
There's always the traditional response to "want to fix it but can't due to backwards compatibility": a keyword argument that defaults to False.
Cheers, Nick.
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Nick Coghlan | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Brisbane, Australia
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http://boredomandlaziness.skystorm.net
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