sha1 salt question

[forumhero]

this goes back to the geocaching thread that's been closed but i still had a question left unanswered. atom said there were a few ways to crack the salted hash but when i tried it using the hashalt format it didn't work. here are the examples:

using sha1($pass.$salt) fails to return plain text

Code:

oclHashcat-lite64.exe -m 101 8882caa3b88a5a16fad6287e26d8a8f9454ad643:PEPPER "N51 03.?d?d?d W114 07.?d?d?d"
oclHashcat-lite v0.6 by atom starting...

Device #1: Cypress, 1024MB, 0Mhz, 20MCU
Device #2: Cypress, 1024MB, 0Mhz, 20MCU
Status.......: Exhausted
Hash.Type....: sha1($pass.$salt)

atom's way using the salt as part of the mask itself and it works

Code:

oclHashcat-lite64.exe -m 100 8882caa3b88a5a16fad6287e26d8a8f9454ad643 "PEPPERN51 03.?d?d?d W114 07.?d?d?d"
oclHashcat-lite v0.6 by atom starting...
Device #1: Cypress, 1024MB, 0Mhz, 20MCU
Device #2: Cypress, 1024MB, 0Mhz, 20MCU
Status.......: Cracked
Hash.Type....: SHA1

shouldn't it work in either case?

[atom]

why should that work? sha1($pass.$salt) is not sha1($salt.$pass)

[forumhero]

understood, please excuse the ignorance as i wasn't sure which was the proper algorithm to use given the known hash and salt.