[Kris Boulez <krbou@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoting Guy Harris (guy@xxxxxxxxxx):
> > When attempting to use a capture filter I keep getting the following
> > error:
> > 
> > Unable to parse filter string (parse error)
> > 
> > >From what I understand about it Ethereal is able to filter and capture
> > specific packets only?   Such as tcp.port==80
> 
> "tcp.port == 80" is not a valid capture filter.
> 
> Capture filters, for better or worse, don't have the same syntax as
> display filters; we currently use the libpcap library for capturing,
> which means we use its code for compiling capture filters (replacing
> that code would be a large task; we might be able to translate filters
> with a subset of display-filter syntax into libpcap capture filters,
> though).
> 
I must admit that the difference between capture and display filters is
one of the reasons I'm still a bit reluctant to use [t]ethereal (which
is a great tool BTW).
What are/were the reasons to have those different filter syntaxes.

Kris,