Hello, Marcin Borkowski <mb...@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