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Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] FW: [Ethereal-users] GUI for filters

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From: "John McDermott" <jjm@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 08:08:10 -0700
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 12:07:48 +0100 (CET), Jaap Keuter <jaap.keuter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005, John McDermott wrote:

MYHOST ip.addr == 1.2.3.4
SERVER ip.addr == 5.6.7.8
WEB tcp.port == 80

Then the filter selection window would show

[] MYHOST    ip.addr == 1.2.3.4
[] SERVER    ip.addr == 5.6.7.8
[] WEB       tcp.port == 80

   [] AND  [] OR

So selecting the first would show traffic to/from me, selecting all three
with AND would show me httping to the server (or vice versa).

Experience with another (non Ethenet-related) tool which sports such an
filter/sieve cascade tell's that it gets a bitch with more complex
expressions? Precedence rules of these multilevel filter expressions can
be tricky.

Yes. I agree. I was explicitly not proposing this. The OP suggested checkboxes and I was proposing those. All my ASCII-art boxes [] were check boxes so one could only select individual filters, AND all selected or OR all selected. My thought was that more complex filters would use the current GUI.

Is:
[   ]  MYHOST_TX   ip.src == 1.2.3.4
[ OR]  MYHOST_RX   ip.dst == 1.2.3.4
[AND]  WEB         tcp.port == 80

the same as:

[   ]  MYHOST      ip.addr == 1.2.3.4
[AND]  WEB         tcp.port == 80

the same as:

[   ]  MYHOST      ip.src == 1.2.3.4 || ip.dst == 1.2.3.4
[AND]  WEB         tcp.port == 80


I think this is way too complicated. There are GUIs for building complex filters, but really, I think that is overkill for Ethereal.

--john



--
John McDermott, CCP
Writer, Educator, Consultant
jjm@xxxxxxxxxx        www.jkintl.com
V: +1 505/377-6293  F: +1 505/377-6313