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

[Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr>]

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. 

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?

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

> 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.

Thank you.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou