[RESOLVED] Statistics not retrieved for tables containing "-" in table name

[deadmanworking]

Hi guys, first of all thanks for this amazing project, I use it extensively on my minicab and it's absolutely perfect for my needs. 

I recently added the Statistics plugin and when displaying the last played, date added, time played and play count statistics I noticed that some tables would not display anything, even though the statistics would update in the Statistics.ini file. It would show: Last played: Never, Date Added: Unknown, Time played 00:00 and Play count: 0

After deleting old entries and generally looking for patterns I noticed that at some point this year PinballX must have changed how it writes entries into Statistics.ini: For tables added with an older version, it would omit any hyphen and write the table entry like so: 
[VisualPinball_F14_Tomcat_Williams_1987_VPW_Mod_10]
 

But the latest versions seem to have changed this behaviour and are now leaving the hyphen in it, even creating a new entry in the ini file: 
[VisualPinball_F-14_Tomcat_Williams_1987_VPW_Mod_10]            <== notice the "-" between F and 14

So any table's statistics that were stored under the latter scheme could not be read by Database manager and the Statistics. 
I can fix this temporarily by removing the hyphen in Statistics.ini to get a correct display in Database manager and the plugin, but when I next play the table a new entry (including) the hyphen is generated and added to the file, but still the old one is read. 

I guess I could rename all tables with a hyphen but maybe there's another idea how to fix this? 

Example here: 

[VisualPinball_CountDown_Gottlieb_1979]
dateadded=27.07.2025 10:00:57
description=Count-Down (Gottlieb 1979)
lastplayed=27.07.2025 10:01:55
timesplayed=7
rom=countdwn
secondsplayed=450

[VisualPinball_Count-Down_Gottlieb_1979]
dateadded=27.07.2025 11:18:50
description=Count-Down (Gottlieb 1979)
lastplayed=27.07.2025 11:30:09
timesplayed=1
rom=countdwn
secondsplayed=34

 

 

 

 

 

[scutters]

Good spot.

It's probably something i could try and address in the stats plugin, but will wait to see if @Tom Speirs confirms it's a deliberate change to PinballX or if it's something that will be fixed there first.

[deadmanworking]

Thank you @scutters.

I have now checked the statistics files a bit more and I can see that after an update I installed on 29 December 2024, I got a whole bunch of new entries for tables that include a "-" in addition to their original entry missing the hyphen.
(I do recall that this update (6.54?) was the last one that worked for me for a while, because installing later versions that came out in early 2025 were crashing the program during startup. When updating to the latest version in May that was fixed.)

I also noticed that other special characters like [ and ] also trigger the same behaviour. 

Thanks for your help!

[Draco1962]

Can we also get copies of your pinballx.ini and log.txt files from when the issue occurred? Thanks!

[deadmanworking]

@Draco1962 attaching my PinballX.ini file, unfortunately I don't have a log file from when I originally updated.

PinballX.ini

[Draco1962]

Can you recreate the issue and attach the log.txt file right after?

[deadmanworking]

@Draco1962 OK sure, here's another example: table was added in November 2024 (without a "-" in title) and the current entry in Statistics.ini:

[VisualPinball_Beavis_and_Butthead_Pinballed]
dateadded=18.11.2024 20:31:45
description=Beavis and Butt-Head Pinballed
lastplayed=17.07.2025 14:52:04
timesplayed=5
rom
secondsplayed=273
favorite=True

After launching PinballX a new entry (with "-" in title) is added to Statistics.ini and consequently updated, but the Statistics plugin and Database manager keep reading the older/first entry only. 

[VisualPinball_Beavis_and_Butt-head_Pinballed]
dateadded=29.07.2025 09:19:49
description=Beavis and Butt-Head Pinballed
lastplayed=29.07.2025 09:21:03
timesplayed=1
rom=
secondsplayed=31

Log file of that PinballX startup is attached. 
Thanks!

 

log.txt

[Draco1962]

Thanks! As @scutters noted, this may likely require @Tom Speirs to review for code changes. 

[scutters]

@deadmanworking Looks like Tom has fixed this. Can you confirm with PinballX V6.91?

(i think you will lose some stats that were recorded against the new entry names, but your old stats should now be back)

[deadmanworking]

@scutters can confirm that now like in the older versions an entry is created/updated without "-". Thanks @Tom Speirs for fixing!