Hybrid attack keyspace inconsistency

[azaran]

I know that it isn't actual "keyspace" and I have got no issue with that. My issue is that once the reported hashcat-keyspace is determined from dictionary a in the second case it is determined from mask which is huge deal-breaker when using --skip and --limit. I asked here about it, because I saw and worked with the information from FAQ and I couldn't find any change regarding this in release version change logs. And I wonder what are the benefits or reasons that hashcat behaves this way. I'm well aware that hashcat-keyspace != literal keyspace nor I need hashcat-keyspace value for anything, I've just found it as the reason why the commands below perform significantly different task and internally generate various number of hashes.

Code:

$ ./hashcat.exe -a 7 --limit=4 ?a?a?a?a simple.dict

$ ./hashcat.exe -a 6 --limit=4 simple.dict ?a?a?a?a