Description: ------------ phpdoc comment states that function returns "boolean; true if the id was found, else false" inside function definition, an sql query result is directly returned, which would return integer 1 if the user exists, or null if the user does not exists. in the event that the perm container was not initialized, boolean false is returned. this function would operate correctly on the assumption of php type conversion, but it is less forgiving if using type-equality checks on the result.