Re: [PATCH] lisp/org-clock.el (org-clock-sum): Rewrite regex using rx

[Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>]

Morgan Smith <morgan.j.smith@outlook.com> writes:

>> That's expected.
>> We have the following _syntax_ description for clock lines:
>>
>> https://orgmode.org/worg/org-syntax.html#Clocks...
>> clock: INACTIVE-TIMESTAMP-RANGE DURATION
> ...
> My specific issue is that the ":*-end" stuff can be set when the
> "*-start" stuff is not.
> ...
> CLOCK: [2023-11-15 Wed 15rr:26]--[2023-11-15 Wed 16:12] =>  0:46
> calculated time: 58320.0
> ...
> What this shows is that an invalid end will cause the entry to be
> ignored, but an invalid start will not.

Yup. Everything makes sense, but only within syntax spec. Actual code
that handles such clock lines is another story.

> We can totally claim that this is a feature, not a bug, if you would
> like.  As this essentially treats
> "CLOCK: [2023-11-15 Wed 15rr:26]--[2023-11-15 Wed 16:12] =>  0:46"
> as
> "CLOCK: [2023-11-15 Wed]--[2023-11-15 Wed 16:12] => 16:12"

I consider this as a problem that should be addressed in
`org-clock-sum' - if opening/closing time is not specified, there is
likely some typo in clock lines. So, as you saw in
fd8ddf2874ca00505aa096c6172ea750cd5e9eaa, I want to display a warning if
something is sus, so that the user is notified that time calculations
might be off.

Warning is important because a number of people use clock functionality
for billing - miscalculating clock sums can literally affect people's
income :)

I think that the best course of action when a problematic timestamp
without opening/closing time is encountered is:

1. Warn user
2. Still calculate the duration, assuming 0s in time (simply because
   previous versions of Org mode did it)

(2) is kind of debatable, but I can imagine some users might make use of

such feature by putting clocks by hand:
CLOCK: [2023-11-15 Wed]--[2023-11-16 Thu] => 24:00

These users may then simply suppress the warning.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>