[Az-Geocaching] What will be the next waypoint number after GCFFFF?

[Brian Cluff]

Team Tierra Buena wrote:

>Not likely, as many older GPSRs can't handle waypoints more than of more
>than six characters. But here was the thinking from TPTB (The Powers
>That Be) at the end of last year. As I recollect from subsequent posts,
>they have pretty much gone forward with what's described in here. Pay
>particular attention to the posts from "Elias", as he's the one writing
>the code for geocaching.com: http://tinyurl.com/7l54.
>
A quick fix would be to switch to a base 36 numbering system (a thru z 
plus 0-9).
It would be fairly trivial to either convert to this new numbering 
system, or make the new system fit inside the old system by looking for 
a number for a new record in the database, it that number is also 
representable as hex, then get add one and repete till you get a non-hex 
number.
I also like the idea of breaking up the caches into categories.  I would 
presonally do both.  That would give you around 1,679,620 per catagory. 
 That would last us much much longer than just spliting up the 
categories.  By the time we run out of GC numbers again, I would think 
that it would be in the relm of possibilities to just do away with only 
having 6 digits to play with, since the base 36 number would give you 
25.6 times the cache space we currently have.  It should be good for at 
least 10 years.. and thats if they DON"T split up the caches.

But thats what I would do....

Brian Cluff
Team Snaptek