Problem : Parser errors are not informative.

[crocket]

commodity BTC
  note Bitcoin

When I parse the above journal with hledger, it should report that note is not a supported subdirective of commodity directive.

Instead, the parser reports the following error.

hledger: ledger.journal:1:1:
unexpected 'c'
expecting end of input or transaction or directive

The same happens when account directive contains unsupported subdirectives and when the end of a journal file is not a new line. When the end of a journal file is not a newline, the parser reports an error at the beginning of the last transaction or any last directive.

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[simonmichael]

Agreed, thanks.

[karanahuja-android]

I started using timedot format and created a new file with contents :
2016/2/2
client1 .... ....
research .

but i got error -
using conversion rules file /karanahuja.timedot.rules
hledger: "/karanahuja.timedot" (line 2, column 1):
unexpected 'i'
expecting journal transaction or directive or end of input

[simonmichael]

That looks strange. I can't reproduce here with hledger 1.2..

[ony]

@crocket I agree that errors sometimes quiet hard to understand because of excessive backtracking in journal parser.

Note that it is hard to identify "not supported" because it means that we should already partially support that sub-directive in parser. On the other hand most of the parser able to generate meaningful error message with their expectations. Example:

hledger: -:2:3:
unexpected 'n'
expecting "format"

[ony]

With newer MegaParsec you can get even better error report:

hledger: -:2:3:
unexpected "note B"
expecting "format"

[simonmichael]

The specific error reported by this issue has been improved: #640 (comment)