In the event that the IAL wasn't updated in time (honestly I doubt that's the problem) I'm sure $address (without parentheses) and $fulladdress would be filled since they aren't retrieving data from the IAL. So you should still be able to use $mask($fulladdress, 2) to get the script working 100% of the time.
And by the way yes I did read what you said. I tried approximately 180 joins/parts using the code you listed on various servers and every one returned correctly. Obviously there's still a fair chance that that wouldn't have caught the bug if it was literally a 1% possibility of it occurring, but I assumed you were exaggerating a bit with that figure. Seeing as you were actually using $address() and not $address though it seems my efforts were a waste - entirely what I was trying to avoid by asking you to paste exact code with which the bug had occurred.
