[Resolved] Error code on GC1Q7QB OHIO CACHER NAME CHALLENGE

Our checker has worked for years and a cacher even posted a find today with their results from the checker. However, we just received an email from a cacher that said they were getting an error message when trying to use the checker. We then tried the checker got this error message: [string ""]:273: bad argument #1 to 'match' (string expected, got boolean). We're hoping someone can check into the problem. Thanks!
GC1Q7QB OHIO CACHER NAME CHALLENGE

I've messaged the script creator. I suppose this happens when an owner had his profile deleted.

We're confused on what you mean by "owner had their profile deleted". You don't mean us, SerenityNow, do you? We've never had our profile deleted.

No. When you enter a username in the checker, the script fetches all finds of that user from Groundspeak and then tries to find out who owns each cache the user has found. If it can't do that, the script fails.

I found that it's caused by this cache you've found: https://coord.info/GC209XP (note the line "A cache by [DELETED_USER])"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2019 09:40AM by PattuX. (view changes)

Thanks for the explanation. Will the script creator be able to create a work-around for the problem?

Yes, shouldn't be a big deal. I don't know when he will be around to fix it tho.

It seems odd that this problem just arose with the checker. I checked GSAK and see that I have found 11 caches from different areas ranging from 2012 to 2018 finds that have [DELETED_USER] as the cache owner. This is the first time that anyone has pointed out this problem with my checker. I have also never encountered this problem running a checker on any other cache. And I've probably run 1000 checkers or more.

As long as a checker does not care about the owner name (which in the most cases it doesn't) the checker works just fine.

It also does not matter when you found the caches, it matters when the owner of a cache you've found deleted their profile. I also believe the possibility to completely delete your profile and all info associated with it is only there since the European GDPR came into effect in 2018.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2019 12:19PM by PattuX. (view changes)

So if I'm thinking through this correctly, the challenge creator will just have to put in some code to skip over the name [DELETED_USER] during it's search. Does that sound right?

Yes, pretty much.

For now you can use pieterix' checker, the script used there does not have this error. We'll probably still fix the other one since other challenge caches with similar requirements are affected as well.

Yes, that checker works. I also tried the one on my page and it works again too. maybe vogelbird, the creator the checker, fixed it. Thanks for all your help on this matter!

The original checker still fails with some of the recent finders.

Thank you once again. I'm sorry for all of the messages. We always like to keep our caches up to date so cachers don't have problems. We have now swapped out the checker on our with the one you selected.

The problem was the the country name was missing

Nope, the old checker still fails with mrmarkeagle and other people.

This means that 242 checkers could have a malfunction

Does somebody had contact with Target, ??

Yes, I contacted Target.

However, it's not that severe. First of all this only happens for checkers checking alphabets against owner name, since that's where things go wrong. This leaves 43 checkers. Additionally I've had a closer look at the script and Target actually checks for invalid results for each find's alphafield. Where it's actually going wrong is at the string preprocessing for the options "ignore_non_alpha", "ingnore_non_alphanum" and "ignore_article".

I think this leaves three checkers malfunctioning for some users:

https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC5MH4H/16815
https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC25EM2/16600
https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC5H7KG/9633

Thanks PattuX for sorting this out.

I'm going to get out of the conversation. All of this is just confusing to a non-script writer. Let me know when it is all resolved and tell me which checker to put in place when all is said and done. And thanks again for your work on this.

All is resoved. YouTube willen have to uwe the checker form Pieter is
https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC1Q7QB/45236

If the problem was that the country name was missing, why did it work for years and now all of a sudden it doesn't work?

The LUA Sandbox has changed to a new LUA Sandbox which might cause a problem somewhere but I am do the scriptwriter

Here's an alternative checker for you:

https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC1Q7QB/45236

Please test and let us know if it solves your problem.