"Transaction to yourself" problems #1476

Posted this on bitcointalk:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80187.msg962781#msg962781 When sending coins from one of your addresses to another one of your addresses, the client only displays an entry saying "transaction to yourself" without listing the amount or the from/to address. While this isn't a bug, it makes keeping track of your coins difficult. Blockchain.info for example lists the transaction just like every other one; I suggest that the client should do the same.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80187.msg969520#msg969520 I sent some coins (using coincontrol) from one of my addresses (A) to another person (B) and decided to send the leftover amount (essentially the change) to one of my addresses (C). The transaction to the other user just shows up fine in the transactions tab, however the one to myself is missing in the list. Since the involved balances are all correct (A to B is ok, change went to C, A is empty), I assume it's just not displayed in the transaction list.

These are both expected behavior:

1. In the transaction list, the client prints the difference in balance. In case of an transaction to yourself, your balance doesn't change so this is 0 (or -0.0x in case of fee). You can view the details such as size of the transaction in the transaction details (double click).

2. The client regards this as "change" which is never shown. Every transaction that doesn't spend the entire balance of a txout generates change, so showing this as transaction to yourself would result in a lot of noise (and thus confusion).

1. I am aware that the tx details show the amount, but they don't display the sender or recipient address. You have to look up the tx-id on eg blockexplorer to figure out from where to where the transfer went. (I'm talking about weeks/months later obviously). Since I cannot add a comment to a tx, I have to track those in an extra file.

2. I realize that normally change is not shown. However, this is not an automatic change, but a tx I created manually. It is more confusing to have a tx I created missing in the tx list. Especially when every other "tx to self" gets listed. I intentionally sent the entire balance of one address to two addresses to avoid an auto-change address.

As a possible solution auto-change should go back to the same address where it originated from.

1. Adding comments to txes is on the TODO list. Recipient address could be shown for send-to-self, however this is a very obscure use case. I'm not against it but I don't have time for it. Feel free to submit a pull.

2. There is no way to distinguish between "auto-change" and deliberate change (okay, I guess it could be remembered in the wallet somehow with the transaction). The current rules to send change to a new address exist for privacy reasons.

1. I'm not good enough with C to do any serious with it unfortunately. I'll have to track those tx separately for now.

2. Seeing that the client displays "to self" transactions (when moving all coins from address A to B) I assumed that it would do the same when only a part of the coins is moved from A to B while most goes to another user C. Like, one line for A to C and one for A to B. I thought that there's maybe some sort of "donotshow" flag or something.

Would it be complex to add an option to let the user select whether to use a new address or the input address for storing change?