Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Is the hiding of protocol fields (e.g. bad checksum) in general a good idea?

[Gilbert Ramirez <gilbertr@xxxxxxxxx>]

IMO, yes, most of the occurences of hidden fields are bad.

The reason I added hidden fields was to deal with the addresses in the
FDDI dissector. There the possibility exists that the MAC addresses
are bit-swapped in the packet, so one version is put into the tree
visibly, while the bit-swapped version is put into the proto_tree
hidden.

--gilbert

On 7/8/05, Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping@xxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Hi List!
> 
> I'm currently looking at the checksum protocol fields. For example, the TCP checksum will usually look like:
> 
> Checksum: 0x5424 [correct]
> 
> and if it's bad:
> 
> Checksum: 0x5424 [incorrect, should be 0x1234]
> 
> In this case, a hidden boolean field is added to be able to filter on this item (e.g. to see only "bad checksummed" packets).
> 
> Question: Why do we hide this field at all?
> 
> I don't see any good reason to hide this (and alike) fields. If someone wants to use it, he must *know* that it's available and must *know* it's name. This doesn't seem to be very intuitive.
> 
> Is there any reason I'm too blind to see?
> 
> IMO this field should be visible and marked as generated, so it will look like: [Bad Checksum: True]
> 
> Regards, ULFL
> 
> P.S: The same *may* apply to most (all?) other hidden fields as well?!?
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