Re: Why is ":CLOCK => hh:mm" allowed as a clock entry?

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2018-10-20, at 10:26, Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:
>
>> I am studying the `org-clock-sum' function (I need to parse an Org file
>> and extract clocking data), and I noticed that ":CLOCK => hh:mm" is
>> allowed as a clock entry.  The Org syntax at
>> https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html#Clock,_Diary_Sexp_and_Planning
>> confirms this.
>
>   CLOCK:
>
> and
>
>   CLOCK: => hh:mm
>
> are simply empty clocks.
>
>> What is the rationale behind this?
>
> Treating them as regular text would complicate parsing unnecessarily,
> e.g., to determine when to stop a paragraph. 

OK, I don't fully get it, but I believe you. :-)

> There are other cases that can lead to odd clocks:
>
>   CLOCK: INACTIVE-TIMESTAMP => HH:MM
>
> where INACTIVE-TIMESTAMP is not a timestamp range.
>
>> I want not only to sum the clocks (org-clock-sum does that, of
>> course), but I want more detailed information (like how many clocks
>> were that in the given period etc.). The format with only the duration
>> makes this troublesome, and I'd like to ignore such entries (I have
>> never seen them in my files, of course). I'm wondering what scenario
>> could lead to their existence?
>
> Hand-writing a clock information?
>
> In any case, you can simply ignore them whenever you find them – which
> shouldn't happen, right?

Yes, that's what I thought.

> We can also add a checker in Org Lint for those problematic cases.

Might be a good idea, though definitely very low priority.

>> BTW, the syntax draft says that there can be any TIMESTAMP object before
>> the DURATION, but `org-clock-sum' assumes that its timestamps are
>> inactive.  Isn't that a bug?
>
> This is an oversight. Clock timestamps must be inactive. I will fix it.

Thanks.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl