Taskwarrior: Using re: in the description creates and recurring task with empty interval

[charlesmercadal]

To report a bug...

• What command(s) did you run?
  task next

• What did you expect to happen?
  I'd be presented with my list of to-do items from the next report.

• What actually happened?
  Received the following output:
  The recurrence value '' is not valid.
  No report output.

I tried a few additional things to see if I could get my list of tasks back ...

• I restored from my backup from a working day a couple days ago, ran task and received the same error.
• I figured out, however, if I changed my system clock back to yesterday's date, however, that task next just fine.
• I tried setting the date forward to tomorrow, to see if time will just sort of fix this error on it's own, and unfortunately it's still generating the same error/behavior.
• I have yet to be able to determine which recurring task in my data is causing this to happen, especially since the value is presented as, apparently, a null string.

• Paste the output of the task diag command.

task 2.5.1
   Platform: FreeBSD

Compiler
    Version: 4.2.1 Compatible FreeBSD Clang 8.0.0 (tags/RELEASE_800/final 356365)
       Caps: +stdc +stdc_hosted +ILP32 +c8 +i32 +l32 +vp32 +time_t64
 Compliance: C++11

Build Features
      Built: Jan 12 2020 02:09:36
      CMake: 3.15.5
    libuuid: libuuid, no uuid_unparse_lower
  libgnutls: 3.6.11
 Build type: Release

Configuration
       File: /home/mercadal/.taskrc (found), 1648 bytes, mode 100644
       Data: /home/mercadal/.task (found), dir, mode 40755
    Locking: Enabled
         GC: Enabled
    $EDITOR: vi
     Server: 
      Trust: strict
Certificate: , not readable, 0 bytes
        Key: , not readable, 0 bytes
    Ciphers: NORMAL
      Creds: 

Hooks
     System: Enabled
   Location: /home/mercadal/.task/hooks
             (-none-)

Tests
      $TERM: xterm (175x62)
       Dups: Scanned 375 tasks for duplicate UUIDs:
             No duplicates found
 Broken ref: Scanned 375 tasks for broken references:
             No broken references found

[charlesmercadal]

I think I have a working theory as to how this error was triggered:

I set my clock back to yesterday, so I could continue to do anything in the task commands to list/look at entries: It appears I had created a parent, recurring task without a recurrence value.

Name          Value                                                             
ID            115
Description   get back to xxxxxxx xxxxxx program if xxxxxxx did not already    
Status        Recurring
Mask          +                                                                 
Entered       2020-02-05 13:59:06 (21h)
Due           2020-02-07 00:00:00                                               
Last modified 2020-02-06 10:04:04 (1h)
Tags          work                                                              
Virtual tags  DUE MONTH PARENT TAGGED TOMORROW UDA UNBLOCKED WEEK YEAR PRIORITY
UUID          95496da7-4849-11ea-9d40-b827eb5ebf17                              
Urgency       13.26
Priority      M                                                                 

    tags              0.8 *    1 =    0.8
    due             0.713 *   12 =   8.56
    UDA priority.M      1 *  3.9 =    3.9
                                   ------
                                    13.26

Date                Modification                 
2020-02-05 13:59:07 Mask set to '-'.
2020-02-06 10:04:04 Mask changed from '-' to '+'.

Yesterday I had marked done the task generated by this recurring parent; I believe that caused task to begin to generate this error today.

Unlike other parent tasks, this one appears to be missing a value altogether for Recurrence, both in this info record, and also in the underlying data file. No empty string... just no key/value pair for "recur" at all.

I can't figure out what command I typed when I first entered this task that could have made such a record... so I can't reproduce it to propose a fix. That might make this bug only an academic exercise at this point, so I'm closing it.

[corbolais]

Sorry, but to me this looks like a serious bug.

No sense in closing this.

An absence of recurrence date _must not under any circumstance_ inflict a global dysfunction on task!!!

Please reopen.

Please fix this!

[charlesmercadal]

I figured out how I made this issue happen.

Since I can reproduce, and given @corbolais 's feedback, I'm reopening — it is a pretty nasty bug. When it first hit me, I couldn't fix by using backups, and I was afraid I'd have to dump all my tasks that I had entrusted to taskwarrior.

I haven't had a chance to look at the code to make a more specific recommendation as of yet, but I would imagine there could be some kind of error check before creating a recurring task with no recurrence period value.

Background on how I made it fail ... I regularly abbreviate the word 'regarding' as 're:' when making notes to myself — such as "call Bob re: shoveling my sidewalk while out of town" It's a muscle memory thing. takswarrior interprets this as an abbreviation for a recurring task request, but creates it with no recurrence value, instead of saying it's an invalid value for recurrence.

Reproduction steps:

1. Example command: task add get back to D re: billable rate +pers pri:H
2. This generated a record like the following:
   {"description":"get back to D billable rate","due":"20200218T050000Z","entry":"20200213T160737Z","modified":"20200213T160737Z","priority":"H","status":"recurring","tags":["pers"],"uuid":"f3e864fe-4e7a-11ea-b5b6-b827eb5ebf17"}
3. Find the pending task generated by the parent in next (or wherever) and mark it done.
4. Wait till the next day (or set your clock forward one day); task next (or virtually every other command) will fail with the recurrence error. The recurrence value '' is not valid.
5. It's a bit of trouble, since you now can't run reports to figure out which record is broken. Fix by going back to the past and removing the invalid parent record.

[tbabej]

Thank you for the detailed report, adding this one on our list of parser issues. @corbolais good call with reopening, this might have slipped through the fingers otherwise :slightly_smiling_face:

[tbabej]

@charlesmercadal Despite very good instructions, I actually cannot reproduce this on 2.5.1. Do you have a way to double check the issue description that triggers this?

$ task add get back to D re: billable rate +pers pri:H
Created task 17.

$ task 17 info
Name          Value                                                      
ID            17
Description   get back to D billable rate                                
Status        Pending
Project       Inbox                                                      
Entered       2020-11-30 11:31:20 (15s)
Last modified 2020-11-30 11:31:20 (15s)                                  
Tags          pers
Virtual tags  PENDING READY TAGGED UDA UNBLOCKED LATEST PROJECT PRIORITY 
UUID          be10a493-f7a9-4749-abf6-64d55271f79f
Urgency          3                                                       
Priority      H
Type          task                                                       

    UDA priority.H      1 *    3 =      3
                                   ------
                                        3

$ task version
task 2.5.1 built for linux
...

You can see the task did not end up in the recurring state, but 're: ' seems to have disappeared from the description completely.

[charlesmercadal]

I missed a step in the reproduction steps above: I couldn't reproduce the creation of a recurring task without a recur period till I added a due date, as per the below:

testacct@rpi2:~ % task version
A configuration file could not be found in 

Would you like a sample /home/testacct/.taskrc created, so Taskwarrior can proceed? (yes/no) y

task 2.5.1 built for freebsd
Copyright (C) 2006 - 2016 P. Beckingham, F. Hernandez.

Taskwarrior may be copied only under the terms of the MIT license, which may be found in the Taskwarrior source kit.

Documentation for Taskwarrior can be found using 'man task', 'man taskrc', 'man task-color', 'man task-sync' or at
http://taskwarrior.org

testacct@rpi2:~ % task add get back to D re: billable rate +pers pri:H due:Fri
testacct@rpi2:~ % task next

ID Age P Tag  Due Description                 Urg 
 2 -   H pers 3d  get back to D billable rate   14

1 task
Creating recurring task instance 'get back to D billable rate'
testacct@rpi2:~ % task next

ID Age P Tag  Due Description                 Urg 
 2 9s  H pers 3d  get back to D billable rate   14

1 task
testacct@rpi2:~ % task 2 info

Name          Value                                                                  
ID            2
Description   get back to D billable rate                                            
Status        Pending
Parent task   c224aa5d-3333-11eb-a501-b827eb5ebf17                                   
Mask Index    0
Entered       2020-11-30 12:44:59 (18s)                                              
Due           2020-12-04 00:00:00
Last modified 2020-11-30 12:44:55 (22s)                                              
Tags          pers
Virtual tags  CHILD DUE PENDING READY TAGGED UDA UNBLOCKED WEEK YEAR LATEST PRIORITY 
UUID          c41b37ed-3333-11eb-a501-b827eb5ebf17
Urgency       14.01                                                                  
Priority      H

    tags              0.8 *    1 =    0.8
    due             0.601 *   12 =   7.21
    UDA priority.H      1 *    6 =      6
                                   ------
                                    14.01

testacct@rpi2:~ % cat .task/backlog.data 
{"description":"get back to D billable rate","due":"20201204T050000Z","entry":"20201130T174455Z","modified":"20201130T174455Z","priority":"H","status":"recurring","tags":["pers"],"uuid":"c224aa5d-3333-11eb-a501-b827eb5ebf17"}
{"description":"get back to D billable rate","due":"20201204T050000Z","entry":"20201130T174459Z","imask":0,"modified":"20201130T174455Z","parent":"c224aa5d-3333-11eb-a501-b827eb5ebf17","priority":"H","status":"pending","tags":["pers"],"uuid":"c41b37ed-3333-11eb-a501-b827eb5ebf17"}
{"description":"get back to D billable rate","due":"20201204T050000Z","entry":"20201130T174455Z","mask":"-","modified":"20201130T174459Z","priority":"H","status":"recurring","tags":["pers"],"uuid":"c224aa5d-3333-11eb-a501-b827eb5ebf17"}

[tbabej]

I still have no luck reproducing this, here is the same sequence of steps using 2.5.1 on Ubuntu 20.04:

root@799730228f65:/# task
A configuration file could not be found in

Would you like a sample /root/.taskrc created, so Taskwarrior can proceed? (yes/no) yes
No matches.

root@799730228f65:/# task version

task 2.5.1 built for linux
...

root@799730228f65:/# task add get back to D re: billable rate +pers pri:H due:Fri
Created task 1.

root@799730228f65:/# task next
ID Age P Tag  Due Description                 Urg
 1 -   H pers 3d  get back to D billable rate 13.8

1 task

root@799730228f65:/# task next
ID Age P Tag  Due Description                 Urg
 1 -   H pers 3d  get back to D billable rate 13.8

1 task

root@799730228f65:/# task 2 info
No matches.

root@799730228f65:/# cat /root/.task/backlog.data
{"description":"get back to D billable rate","due":"20201211T000000Z","entry":"20201207T023929Z","modified":"20201207T023929Z","priority":"H","status":"pending","tags":["pers"],"uuid":"6095f324-6426-4d29-9957-773cc0279f1a"}