Path payment is taking only 4 hops BUT stellar is mentioning upto 6 hops

Question

Let assets are A,B,C,D,E,F

I have created few orders like
A->B B->C C->D D->E E->F

Now, i have created an order where user1 is selling "F" to a destination user2 and the receiving Asset is "A"

After calling finding path methods it is showing me below output (Where the first letter of each asset represent the Asset i have mentioned above means "AXY" is "A").

    {
    "source_asset_type": "credit_alphanum4",
    "source_asset_code": "EXY",
    "source_asset_issuer": "GA24WKNRNMEMKK3PYE4GPFCNFWRP75MUYDBYJEGRMEZE3EKCSRBEYSBK",
    "source_amount": "96.0000000",
    "destination_asset_type": "credit_alphanum4",
    "destination_asset_code": "AXY",
    "destination_asset_issuer": "GBQF24JXLPXRWGTCGHWMXECOEE3VFYXJUWFRHIVNEF7GE6TQK2H3FXE4",
    "destination_amount": "1.0000000",
    "path": [
      {
        "asset_type": "credit_alphanum4",
        "asset_code": "DXY",
        "asset_issuer": "GCJ3ODETXMRTNCRD6BHHYUFLBVIQJHZVBYBVES6QDNRMJAF3ACZC47B6"
      },
      {
        "asset_type": "credit_alphanum4",
        "asset_code": "CLM",
        "asset_issuer": "GA5ZB6DSHSOBNEYSCXH3ULEIYT5V2WOJRCWQE4ANZ56B6BVZF6XSSIQX"
      },
      {
        "asset_type": "credit_alphanum4",
        "asset_code": "BCZ",
        "asset_issuer": "GC5DKZTNXPMLRYSBB7QRH2QWTMEP56USAXJHA5LMTYOTXJO6CDVIHQRD"
      }
    ]
  }

So, total 4 hops it is showing, BUT stellar mention in their document that upto 6 hops it can accept. Already mentioned that my order exist from "E" to "F" also. My horizon version is v0.23.0. What could be the possible reason?

Answer 1

Horizon always returns the optimal path. The E->F part is redundant in this particular case as you requested payment path from E to A. And that's what we clearly see here: EXY->DXY->CLM->BCZ->AXY.