Did you know Node.js uses IEEE double (53-bit) to store an inode number (64-bit)? Well now you do. And if you ever wondered why I think Node.js is unsuitable for even basic usage and must be avoided for anything you intend to run in any capacity n>=0 times, here's another reason.
https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/12115#issuecomment-290064494
@voidstar And I'm guessing this is because they're putting it in a JS numeric field somewhere, right? There's hundreds of other things I like about node.js, and inode numbers aren't really a thing I've ever needed to use so far... So I'm gonna disagree with you there.
@thor Quite likely it is, but with Node being increasingly used for regular apps (see Atom, with a wide install base, where this could be highly relevant) I think this is actually something they should fix. And since they expose it, it's not something bolted on, they should have dealt with it when they first created that ability.
@voidstar How would they implement it properly, exactly? There's no 64-bit integer type in JS. If node stored this number in 64-bit form, they'd be forced to cast it to double almost immediately, because all the rest of their code is probably designed around that. It actually seems like a genuinely tricky problem to solve. Maybe they could use a two-element UInt32Array...
@voidstar node.js is from 2009 and UInt32Array, the only data type that could conceivably handle this somewhat cleanly, was only standardized in 2015. Betcha the node.js FS implementation is much older than 2015.