GEDcompare stripping first and last forward slashes from URLs in GEDCOM notes

Question

When I use GEDCOMpare to import a GEDCOM, it loses the first and last forward slash in lines like

2 CONT http://www.limerickcity.ie/media/06%2016%201832.pdf
changing them to

http:/www.limerickcity.ie/media06%2016%201832.pdf

This has been going on for several years. I first spotted it in a large GEDCOM file which I imported over two years ago. The same thing has happened in a smaller GEDCOM file which I imported today.

Comments

I noticed this when I wrote the AGC extension a few years ago. Very annoying!

It is not really possible for AGC to fix but there are common cases it fixes.

        // We also need to fix up any "/" characters that have been removed

        const possibleLinkPrefixes = [

          ["http:/search.findmypast.co.ukrecord?", "http://search.findmypast.co.uk/record?", "Findmypast"],

          ["https:/search.findmypast.co.ukrecord?", "https://search.findmypast.co.uk/record?", "Findmypast"],

          ["http:/www.findmypast.co.uk/", "http://www.findmypast.co.uk/", "Findmypast"],

          ["https:/www.findmypast.co.uk/", "http://www.findmypast.co.uk/", "Findmypast"],

          ["http:/search.findmypast.co.uk/bnaviewarticle?", "http://search.findmypast.co.uk/bna/viewarticle?", "Findmypast British Newspaper Archive"],

          ["https:/search.findmypast.co.uk/bnaviewarticle?", "https://search.findmypast.co.uk/bna/viewarticle?", "Findmypast British Newspaper Archive"],

          ["http:/search.findmypast.co.uk/", "http://search.findmypast.co.uk/", "Findmypast"],

          ["https:/search.findmypast.co.uk/", "http://search.findmypast.co.uk/", "Findmypast"],

          ["https:/books.google.combooks?", "https://books.google.com/books?", "Google books"],

        ];

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I think it would be a lot easier to fix GEDcompare than to deal with the millions of possible cases in AGC!

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I agree. But GEDCOMpare doesn't seem to get fixed very often. Fingers crossed it will be.

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and I suspect those links are showing up in suggestions to be fixed

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Suggestions are indeed where I first noticed the bug, although they become even more obvious if I add Wiki mark-up [] around the broken URLs.

Answer 1

Here's another bug that I haven't quite gotten to the bottom of:

2 CONT the beloved wife of
becomes

the beloved wife of.

[i.e. with an extra full stop at the end of the text.]

So far, I've mostly noticed this in things like the text of a tombstone inscription that I have transcribed in the notes complete with line breaks.  I'm not sure whether it's triggered by short lines or by lines with no other punctuation or by some completely different logic (or lack of logic!).

It's usually easier to just re-copy the notes text from my offline database manually than to fix the errors in GEDcompare's attempt to copy it.

I am under time pressure to add 75 profiles to WikiTree for a cemetery tour that I've been asked to give next weekend, and thought GEDcompare might speed things up, but it probably wont.

Comments

I just checked a couple of gedcom records that I recently entered. The URLs are correct in these records.

Have you looked in the gedcom txt file to see if it is correct in the file? Seems a weird condition to be in the gedcom processing application.

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Yes, the text in my original post is copied and pasted directly from the GEDCOM file which I uploaded.

If you could do likewise with a counter-example, then we might be able to figure out what subtle difference is triggering the error.