blocks minus 1
I’d like to reduce the number of blocks displayed in the status bar by 1. When you first load the program, it’ll display 0 blocks instead of 1: “0 connections 0 blocks 0 transactions”
It’s always been “nBestHeight + 1” because it’s counting the genesis block. Technically, yes, the genesis block is a block. It’s a hardcoded block that you start out with. You can’t not have the genesis block. Maybe think of it as a reference coin that you measure other coins against. The block count people are looking for is the number of blocks they’ve downloaded.
The main benefit is that blocks will be equal to the block number of the current best block. If blocks is 10, then the highest block number you have is 10. It means you have block 10 and you don’t have block 11.
It would reduce the confusion we had here:
Quote from: kencausey on August 15, 2010, 2:45:26 PM UTC[Deleted] Quote from: davidonpda on August 15, 2010, 11:31:37 PM
… It already is on block 74638. I assume that means that block is now a good one?
I had some confusion on this myself and got clarification in #bitcoin-dev:
The bad block was number 74638, the last good one was 74637. The numbers start at 0, so when your client shows there are 74638 blocks then that means you have up to block number 74637, the last good one.
+1
Offtopic: Does this forum have some kind of upvote plugin or something?
Done in SVN rev 137
Rather than changing the counting scheme why not simply refer to the latest block rather than the count of blocks.
74741 blocks
versus
Latest block: 74740
eliminating the need to change the counting scheme and requiring many to adjust their thinking.
Rather than changing the counting scheme why not simply refer to the latest block rather than the count of blocks.
74741 blocks
versus
Latest block: 74740
eliminating the need to change the counting scheme and requiring many to adjust their thinking.
From my own experience, a change commited will always make some happier than other, but in the end everyone will get used to it, whereas reverting a change that is already in and doing one more change to copy with the reason why the reverted change was initially submitted will just make everyone confused. Proof of that is the phrase I just wrote down!
Latest block: 74740
So instead of
0 connections 0 blocks 0 transactions
it would be
0 connections Latest block: 0 0 transactions
That just doesn’t look right.
I think the way Satoshi explained it makes the most sense: the genesis block may be technically a block but inside the chain it’s nothing more than a reference point. It’s like the zero for numbers. The zero of course is a number itself but when counting something it’s just a reference point. Well, at least humans count like that 😛