On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 5:41 AM, Mike Charlton <[email protected]> wrote:
> Debugging is hard sometimes :-) One thing that strikes me is that you > have posted the output from ledger. People have taken that output and > shown that it balances in ledger. The only possibility is that there is > something in the input file that is causing it not to balance. It could be > many things: some strange character in the input that isn't making it to > the output, a different entry that is causing a problem with this one, etc, > etc. > > To narrow down the problem: > > * Step 1: Make a copy of your original input file! Don't skip this step > because you can easily make mistakes editing stuff and forget what it was > like before you started. > > * Step 2: Do exactly what others have done: take the information in the > email and enter it into a new file. Then run ledger to ensure that it > indeed balances. If it does, then you know the problem is somewhere else. > If it doesn't, then I would start looking at the encoding of your files. > It's a bit complicated, so if your new file (with just that one > transaction) doesn't balance, feel free to email it to me and I will > investigate. > > * Step 3: If Step 2 balances, *copy* the input from your original input > file into a new file and see if it balances. If it doesn't, try to figure > out the difference between the file in Step 2 and the file in Step 3. > > * Step 4: If Step 3 balances, go back to your original file (remember to > check that you have a copy of the original!!!) and delete everything except > that one transaction. See if that balances. If it doesn't, try to figure > out the difference between the original with everything deleted and the > files in Step 2 and Step 3. > > * Step 5: If Step 4 balances, start adding one transaction at a time from > your copy back into the original, running ledger each time. Keep doing > that until the transaction stops balancing. This will be the thing causing > the problem. Try to make the smallest possible file that still breaks and > send it to the list. > > * Alternate Step 5: Instead of adding one transaction at a time, restore > your original from the copy and start deleting one transaction at a time > (but *don't* delete the transaction you have shown us). Keep doing that > until it starts to balance. The last thing you deleted is the thing that > broke everything. Again, make the smallest possible file that still breaks > and send it to the list. > > This technique will probably lead you to finding the problem. I know it > is a pain. I've had to do it a couple of times to find problems in my > files. So far, all of my problems have come from illegal input or trying > features that don't actually exist in ledger :-) Hopefully it will be the > same for you. > > Hope that helps! > The cure is worse than the disease!! (sorry but that's a huge pile of work to try to find an intermittent problem) What makes the problem especially frustrating is that after a period of time things do balance. I tried things a while after I sent the last update. The first transaction resulted in a non-balanced ledger. Ten hours later it balanced. (I had changed nothing in the interim.) This would mean that one would need to include time in each of these steps. At this time I have a massive amount of items that need to be entered and a deadline with there being far too little time between now and then to spend lots of hours doing the debugging. Was hoping that someone might have some ideas as to something that was a little less time consuming but if this kind of thing continues I will be doing what I can to dig out the problem AFTER I'm done with what I have to do. Thanks for the help (very very much!!) Dee -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
