JSON serialization of empty or comma variables problem

Users/Site Administrators
1

I have OpenPBS 20.0.1 and have a problem with qstat JSON serialization when one of my job variables is empty or contains comma.

Syntax that I tried:
Empty variable: “qsub -v RecordSeparator= start.sh”
Single quotes: “qsub -v RecordSeparator=’’ start.sh”
Double quotes: “qsub -v RecordSeparator="" start.sh”
Comma: “qsub -v RecordSeparator=, start.sh”
Comma in quotes: “qsub -v RecordSeparator="," start.sh”
Escaped comma in quotes: “qsub -v RecordSeparator="\," start.sh”

In all these cases the job is submitted, but when I look at job details with command "qstat -f -F json ", I see that this variable is serialized to

“RecordSeparator”:",PBS_O_QUEUE=workq",

I.e. PBS incorrecty treats next variable key as value of my empty variable. What I would expect is

“RecordSeparator”:"",
“PBS_O_QUEUE”:“workq”

Furthermore with escaped comma PBS also produces line with incorrect json syntax, because \ is control character in json. I’d suggest to replace \ to \\ when serializing to json.

“Submit_arguments”:"-q workq -l select=1:ncpus=48 -v RecordSeparator=\, start.sh",

Example json output (partial)

{
    "timestamp":1654506845,
    "pbs_version":"20.0.1",
    "Jobs":{
        "14228.ip-10-77-176-170":{
            "Job_Name":"start.sh",
            "Variable_List":{
                "PBS_O_LANG":"en_US.UTF-8",
                "PBS_O_SHELL":"/bin/bash",
                "PBS_O_SYSTEM":"Linux",
                "RecordSeparator":",PBS_O_QUEUE=workq",
                "PBS_O_HOST":"ip-10-77-176-170.eu-west-1.compute.internal"
            },
            "Submit_arguments":"-S /bin/bash -q workq -l select=1:ncpus=48 -v RecordSeparator= start.sh",
        }
    }
}