#20 esniper -q3 fileName seems to fail determining the next auction

[Marc-Oliver Pahl]

My esniper version: esniper version 2.31.0

esniper -q3 fileName

seems to fail determining the next auction under certain conditions:

• the fileName contains exactly three auctions
• Two of them are in less than one day
• Maybe more (it could also be correlated with me being the highest bidder of the auction esniper selected as next)

I could verify the error with my concrete fileName content.
However, ading auctions ending further in the future and not having me as highest bidder at any did not produce the problem.

Here my shell output, maybe you see the correlation:

> esniper -s5 -q3 esniper.test
Enter eBay user name: A

Auction xyz
Time remaining: 9 hours 35 mins 11 secs (34511 seconds)
End time: 03/04/2016 10:24:55
Currently: 1.50  (your maximum bid: 2.12)
# of bids: 2
High bidder: B

Auction zyx
Time remaining: 4 days 20 hours 13 mins (418380 seconds)
End time: 07/04/2016 21:02:47
Currently: 5.00  (your maximum bid: 11.12)
# of bids: 1
High bidder: A

Auction yzx
Time remaining: 19 hours 1 min 16 secs (68476 seconds)
End time: 03/04/2016 19:51:06
Currently: 1.50  (your maximum bid: 11.12)
# of bids: 2
High bidder: C

Sorting auctions...

Need to win 3 item(s), 3 auction(s) remain

Auction zyx
Time remaining: 4 days 20 hours 13 mins (418380 seconds)
End time: 07/04/2016 21:02:50
Currently: 5.00  (your maximum bid: 11.12)
# of bids: 1
High bidder: A
Latency: 0 seconds
Sun Apr  3 00:49:51 2016: Sleeping for a day

The expected behaviour would be that esniper selects "xyz". The one it selects ("zyx") is the worst selection since it will miss both other auctions.

[Bodo]

This is aknown problem. The cause is that you are the high bidder for one auction.
One workaround is not to bid manually when you want to use esniper. Or in your case when you want to win all available auctions you could start a separate esniper process for every single auction where you already are high bidder.

Esniper is designed to make sure you don't win more auctions than you specified as quantity. The implementation is very simple: when sorting the auctions, all auctions where you are high bidder are placed first. That's not well suited when you want to win all articles, but in case you want only one article this makes sure esniper doesn't bid on an auction which ends earlier when you already seem to win another one ending later.

It is difficult to find an algorithm that is suited for all use cases, but it may be a simple solution to add an option to force sorting by remaining time only.

[Marc-Oliver Pahl]

Thanks for your explanation!

Maybe just adding a warning if esniper detects that the own user name is already bidding for some auction could be a good idea.

Those using the tool will most likely know then what to do. I would consider such a warning message more as a reminder for those not using the tool every day to make them double check what esniper does in such a case. I totally agree with you that keeping esniper KISS is more important than catching all cases.

Thanks!