Random welcome.ans files not working as they should

[the-godfather-007]

At random, when a user logs into the WWIV BBS, and the BBS has random welcome.ans screens as welcome.0 welcome.1 welcome.2 ..etc... or welcome.1 welcome.2 doesn't matter .. one random choice appears to be display nothing. And or the issue is the Hit [ESC] fake mailer (Bot check) at initial connect. It happens after hitting escape twice and appears to happen more if the [ESC] has any length of pause between the first and second key press. I would think the only thing that would abort (or should) an ansi file from displaying would be the space bar, and only if that has not been disabled with an MCI code? This is also per instruction from a dev to place them in /wwiv/menus/wwiv/gfiles

[ericpareja]

Do you still have a welcome.ans file?

This is the fallback if the randomfile display doesn't work.

This is in bbs/lilo.cpp GetAnsiStatusAndShowWelcomeScreen()

if (!bout.printfile_random(WELCOME_NOEXT)) {
  bout.printfile(WELCOME_NOEXT);
}

[the-godfather-007]

If I use a welcome.ans at all (within directory /wwiv/gfiles or /wwiv/menus/wwiv/gfiles) it ONLY displays welcome.ans. The random only appears to work IF the .ans extension is missing. Therefore, without, yes, the fall back is nothing.

[ericpareja]

It appears that the culprit is an off-by-one error in common/printfile.cpp. I'll patch this and submit a PR.
If you want to fix it in your codebase, change the line towards the end of the file that reads:
return printfile_path(FilePath(dir, StrCat(base_fn, ".", os::random_number(screens))),
and change it to:
return printfile_path(FilePath(dir, StrCat(base_fn, ".", os::random_number(screens-1))),

[ericpareja]

If I use a welcome.ans at all (within directory /wwiv/gfiles or /wwiv/menus/wwiv/gfiles) it ONLY displays welcome.ans. The random only appears to work IF the .ans extension is missing. Therefore, without, yes, the fall back is nothing.

i can't replicate this error where it won't display the randoms if welcome.ans is there. i'll open a different issue for this.

[the-godfather-007]

Thank you for the fix. I added it to /common/printfile.cpp file. Curious which binary does this change that needs copied over and is there a master list of .cpp files and their associated binaries they compile into?