can this be done with hooks (postbit escape)

[Ron1n]

I am trying to prevent the first post of every thread from being displayed. I was going to add to the $hook_query_where string, but that causes the thread to appear locked when there is only one post (i.e. nothing is returned).

I decided that hacking the following top places would be best:

PHP Code:

foreach (explode(',', $cache_postids) AS $id)
    {
        // get the post from the post array
        if (!isset($postarray["$id"]))
        {
            continue;
        }
        $post = $postarray["$id"];

        if ($tachyuser = in_coventry($post['userid']) AND !can_moderate($thread['forumid']))
        {
            continue;
        } 


PHP Code:

while ($post = $db->fetch_array($posts))
    {
        if ($post['visible'] == 1)
        {
            // fix to prevent deleted posts that are the last post on the page from not being shown
            if ($counter >= $perpage)
            {
                break;
            }
            ++$counter;
            if ($postorder)
            {
                $post['postcount'] = --$postcount;
            }
            else
            {
                $post['postcount'] = ++$postcount;
            }
        }

        if ($tachyuser = in_coventry($post['userid']) AND !can_moderate($thread['forumid']))
        {
            continue;
        } 


But there werent any hooks, so I resorted to this hook in class_postbit.php:

PHP Code:

($hook =& vBulletinHook::fetch_hook('postbit_display_start')) ? eval($hook) : false; 


However, I cannot use

PHP Code:

return ''; 


to get out of it because that just retuns '' for the hook. Any suggestions on how to do this without modifying files by hand?