What does SUID, SGID and Sticky bits do on inappropriate files?

[Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR]

As quoted from <5128 at auspex.auspex.com> by guy at auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris):
+---------------
| In article <5114 at auspex.auspex.com> guy at auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
|  >>>SunOS and maybe other Unixes use g+s on a directory to produce sticky gid's:
|  >
|  >4.3BSD added this (it may have appeared in other systems before that),
| 
| Said brain saw "sticky" and "directory" and immediately read "sticky
| directory", not noting that the bit being talked about was the set-GID
+---------------

My fault, I being the one who posted the "| >>>" line:  I made the same
mistake while composing it ("g+s" with "s" meaning "sticky").  Of course, one
could call the behavior "setgid", although with rather different meaning from
the usual....

++Brandon
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