Inline comments not recognized when there is no character after *>

[maximilianocatarinozup]

Hello,

First, thank you for the awesome job.
I'm trying to parse a Cobol code with a header with the structure below:

   *>************************************************************************
   *> Program:    Program name
   *>
   *> Purpose:    Description
   *>
   *> Author:       Name
   *>
   *> Date-Written: Date
   *>
   *> Tectonics:    compile command
   *>
   *> Usage:        Usabe example
   *>
   *>************************************************************************

In the lines with only *>, followed or not by spaces, I get an error java.lang.RuntimeException: syntax error in line 8:7 extraneous input *> expecting.

I made a test setting some text after the "*>" and the exception do not occur.
I'm using the 2.4.0 version with TANDEM format.

I'm new to Cobol and I'm not sure if something is wrong. It's the expected behavior?

[sjbutler]

The exception you see is from the Antlr lexer during the second stage of parsing, and is a symptom of a problem in the preprocessor.

I've had the same problem, but haven't had chance to refine the fix and contribute it with tests.

on line 22 of io/proleap/cobol/preprocessor/sub/line/rewriter/impl/CobolInlineCommentEntriesNormalizerImpl.java if you replace the regular expression with \\*>(\\S+.*)?$ and recompile then the parser will work with '*>' comments without spaces. However, it is not a clean solution as additional stars are introduced somewhere else in the preprocessor (I think).

Maybe @uwol can see a better solution?

[maximilianocatarinozup]

Hi @sjbutler, thank you for the answer.
I'll change the regular expression. I think the patter \\*>[^\n\r]\\* could be better. I'll do some tests to check.

I believe I found an unsupported syntax to PIC. I'll check the docs first.