Issue #5610 has been updated by markus heiler. Oops, sorry. Not a bug, but a feature request. Hmm not sure how to change it ... ---------------------------------------- Bug #5610: Allow strings as input for Process.uid= http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/5610 Author: markus heiler Status: Open Priority: Low Assignee: Category: Target version: ruby -v: latest 1.8.7 but perhaps also 1.9.x On my unix system I often have a "debug" user account, belonging to the "debug" group. With: Process.euid You can find out the effective uid and you can change it via =. Process.euid = 522 That works. Today I tried to do this though: Process.euid = "debug" It does not work because .euid= wants a string. Would it not be better to be more flexible than that? Internally it could be converted into a number anyway as /etc/passwd can be read. And if it can not be converted, an exception could be raised. At least for me that would be quite convenient, no idea if this has merit for others, but then again it is just a proposal. :) Thank you for reading. -- http://redmine.ruby-lang.org