Albums, strictly speaking...

[Cadder]

I've been having fun and games trying to figure out the logic behind how Strictalbum works... and failing abysmally.

I have a CD-style skin.

I ran into a problem where Elvis Presley and Blondie both have an album called "The Essential Collection" - both artists tracks were being listed as if they were all on the same album.  (nb; ALL the songs from both these albums have ID3 tags reading "The Essential Collection" - ie, the word "The" is included)

So I added "The Essential Collection" to my strictalbum settings thus:
StrictAlbum1 = Greatest Hits
StrictAlbum2 = Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
StrictAlbum3 = The Best Of
StrictAlbum4 = Best Of
StrictAlbum5 = The Essential Collection

Guess what happened? Nothing. No difference.
I wondered whether the title was supposed to be in quotes. So I changed the last line to:

StrictAlbum5 = "The Essential Collection"

Again. Not one iota of difference. Blondie and Elvis still on the same album.

So I altered the line, presuming "The" was being objected to or skipped in some way, so the last line read:

StrictAlbum5 = Essential Collection

This time, I got a result... sorta. This time, I had 30 or so albums, each with one or two tracks, under both Blondie And Elvis - so at least the artists are being separated this time.

In desperation, I changed the settings again, to:

#StrictAlbum1 = *
StrictAlbum1 = Greatest Hits
StrictAlbum2 = Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
StrictAlbum3 = The Best Of
StrictAlbum4 = Best Of
StrictAlbum5 = Essential Collection
StrictAlbum6 = The Essential Collection

Lo and behold, it worked. Blondie and Elvis now neatly in their respective alphabetical places and all their songs neatly packed onto their own "The Essential Collection" CDs as they should be.

The sixty-four thousand dollar question is... WTF?
Why would DWJukebox behave this way?

PS; incidentally, a single line Strictalbum1=* DID work as expected, but I remembered reading somewhere that this can be less than desirable for other reasons. Can't remember why or where I read it now. Hence it's commented out.

[Chris]

What you did the first time should have worked.. I'll look to see if there's a bug in the code.

--Chris

[Chris]

OK, I posted a beta at http://dwjukebox.com/releases/dwj30106b.zip if you want to see if it works properly with your first example.

--Chris