understanding dictionary/mask attack

[johnjohnsp1]

read this article: http://ob-security.info/?p=56

thanks for the reply atom, i finally understood how it works, and i also see where i was wrong, my example of password was like : pippopippo02\ on my command line i used both dict 1&2 and surprised the problem was the character "\" as last char that is not recognized by the dict2.txt. Is it possible that the dictionary file don't support the symbols (tried with \! and they don't work always get status exhausted).Thats strange since i add symbol manually don't you think ? Are there any limitations of use with symbols inside the dict files ? i guess will try with mask attack on the right.

Thanks again for the answer