CTAN.bib - @online parsed, but its comment

[Siedlerchr]

JabRef version

6.0-alpha

Operating system

macOS

Details on version and operating system

mac os 15.5

Checked with the latest development build (copy version output from About dialog)

• I made a backup of my libraries before testing the latest development version.
• I have tested the latest development version and the problem persists

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

1. Download https://github.com/GuenterPartosch/Convert_CTAN/blob/master/output/CTAN.bib
2. open in JabRef
3. See that JabRef says it could not parse one entry

The problem is

% Type of BibLaTeX entries    : @online

The parser should skip this, maybe by checking only the first x columns for the @ sign

Appendix

...

Log File

Paste an excerpt of your log file here

[Zurtar]

/assign-me

[github-actions]

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[Zurtar]

I'm not sure what the solution would be, the parser can skip if its not within the first x columns like you suggested but that would end up skipping valid entries. For example, entries that have comments and the key on the same line:

@Test
void parseCommentAndEntryInOneLine() throws IOException {
    String bibtexEntry = """
            Some random comment that should stay here @Article{test,
              Author                   = {Foo Bar},
              Journal                  = {International Journal of Something},
              Note                     = {some note},
              Number                   = {1}
            }""";

	(...)
}

Maybe it could check if any entry is malformed and is missing its open/closing brackets regardless of comments? But then we'd just end up showing that same warning popup to the user.

[Siedlerchr]

@koppor Any ideas?

[koppor]

Checking for validity is a nice idea.

I would be more straightforward:

A) Check if line starts with comment indicator string: %, #, --, *, // - and then treat the whole line as comment

B) Enforce Entries start at column 1 and adapt the test (and then call for user feedback on Mastodon etc)

Option A is more backwards compatible

[Zurtar]

A) Check if line starts with comment indicator string: %, #, --, *, // - and then treat the whole line as comment
Do comments have to start with those indicators? This test case shows one without it:

@Test
void parseCommentAndEntryInOneLine() throws IOException {
    String bibtexEntry = """
            Some random comment that should stay here @Article{test,
              Author                   = {Foo Bar},
              Journal                  = {International Journal of Something},
              Note                     = {some note},
              Number                   = {1}
            }""";
(...)
}

This would be valid, but if it had a comment indicator before it the parser would skip it. Which seems arbitrary. We could also just then have Type of BibLaTeX entries : @online and we'd get the original error.

[koppor]

A) Check if line starts with comment indicator string: %, #, --, *, // - and then treat the whole line as comment
Do comments have to start with those indicators? This test case shows one without it:

@Test
void parseCommentAndEntryInOneLine() throws IOException {
    String bibtexEntry = """
            Some random comment that should stay here @Article{test,
              Author                   = {Foo Bar},
              Journal                  = {International Journal of Something},
              Note                     = {some note},
              Number                   = {1}
            }""";
(...)
}

This would be valid, but if it had a comment indicator before it the parser would skip it. Which seems arbitrary. We could also just then have Type of BibLaTeX entries : @online and we'd get the original error.

Do you have another proposal?

We could use AI as fallback - if the user has enabled AI usage in JabRef.

Other than that, Option A seems to make things better

[koppor]

An initial approach was implemented at #12949 - looked good at first sight; needs some JUnit test cases.