How is keyspace calculated

[epixoip]

for -a 3, --keyspace is not the full keyspace of the attack as you might expect, but rather the keyspace of the base loop excluding the modifier. it's pretty complicated, that's why atom recommends you just use --keyspace to calculate it.

i'm trying to convince him to write a standalone 'keyspace' program for hashcat-utils though so that keyspace calculation does not rely on oclHashcat.