[Dx4win] Prefixes/Zones for Spotters bug?

[Larry Gauthier (K8UT)]

Frank,

I also required more granularity and control over DX spots than DX4Win 
provides, and I wanted it to be more flexible so I could easily change the 
spotting patterns during a contest, or when a DXpedition (VK9DWX, for 
example) was on the air.

To solve this I installed ARUSER software on my PC, connected to the 
higher-function VE7CC clusters. I then configured DX4Win to attach to the 
local copy of ARUSER for packet spots. This setup gives me much better (and 
easier to use) control over packet spot filtering.

-larry
K8UT
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frank R. Oppedijk" <f.oppedijk at avista.nl>
To: <Dx4win at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 07:18
Subject: [Dx4win] Prefixes/Zones for Spotters bug?


> Hi,
>
> I'm using DX4WIN 7.05.04 and I'm trying to get filtering on prefixes to 
> work. Either I totally misunderstand the way the "Prefixes/Zones for 
> Spotters" field works, or have discovered a bug.
>
> When I enter OK into the "Prefixes/Zones for Spotters" field, I would 
> except to receive only spots from spotters in the Czech Republic. However, 
> I get spots from both Czech and US spotters. It looks as if DX4WIN 
> interprets the OK as any spots from spotters OK as well as spots from 
> spotters from substrings from OK (except the first substring - see 
> further!)!
>
> I did a bit more experimenting (spots from I, K, DL, VK, PA, UA, EA were 
> available at the DX-cluster at that time):
>
> specified filter prefix spotters displayed from
> OK                      OK, K
> OI                      I
> KI                      I
> IK                      K
> ODL                     DL
> OD                      none (there weren't any OD spots present)
> VK                      VK and K
> DLVK                    VK and K
> PAVK                    VK and K
> VKPA                    PA
>
> So it looks like DX4WIN does the following:
>
> 1. It chops the specified filter prefix into chunks (eg. the prefix VK is 
> split into V and K)
> 2. It checks which chunks are valid prefixes (V isn't a valid prefix but K 
> is)
> 3. It matches the spotters against the whole specified filter prefix (VK) 
> and all chunks EXCEPT THE FIRST ONE (in this example, only the K chunck is 
> checked)
>
> The fact that the first chunk is discarded is not visible from the VK 
> example, but is visible from the KI example (K spotters were discarded), 
> and similarly from the IK example (I spotters were discarded), and also 
> from the DLVK, PAVK and VKPA examples.
>
> Now, have I killed too many brain cells in last weekend's party, or have I 
> discovered quite an intricate pattern-matching bug?
>
> As you may understand, the current behavior is undesired for me, as I 
> don't have much use for spots from stateside spotters, still get them all 
> when specifying a filter containing a K, such as OK...
>
> 73,
>
> Frank PA4N
>
>
>
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