Groovy is driving me crazy!

I use already a long time the same piece of code for my FancyBox skin en for the PhotoSwipe skin for the same set of images and settings.
It works OK with fancyBox, but now suddenly it crashes with PhotoSwipe:

Stack trace for jAlbum 31.0.1 using skin PhotoSwipe 5.4.3:
 
se.datadosen.util.ScriptException: org.codehaus.groovy.control.MultipleCompilationErrorsException: startup failed:
Script143.groovy: 24: Unexpected input: '{\r\n if (showExposureDateThumb||showFilenames||showTitle||showDescriptions) {\r\n System.out.println("2 textToShow: "  +  textToShow);\r\n   out.print("<div class="\"thumbText\"">");   \r\n   if (showFilenames) {\r\n     out.print("<small>");    \r\n     out.print(label.replaceAll("_"," "));\r\n \tout.print("</small><br>"); \r\n   }\r\n\r\n   if (showTitle &&  fileTitle.length() > 0) {\r\n     out.print("<strong>");        \r\n     out.print(fileTitle);\r\n     out.print("</strong><br>"); \r\n   }\r\n   \r\n   if (showDescriptions) {\r\n     out.print(shortComment);    \r\n   }\r\nif (exists.originalDate) {\r\n  if (showExposureDateThumb) )' in index.htt at line number 634 at column number 30
	at se.datadosen.util.ScriptException.of(ScriptException.java:59)

This is the piece of code:

<%
boolean textToShow= (showExposureDateThumb||showFilenames || (showTitle &&  (fileTitle.length() > 0)) ||  (showDescriptions &&  (shortComment.length() > 0))); 
System.out.println("1 textToShow: "  +  textToShow);
if (!masonryGallery || (masonryGallery && textToShow)) {
 if (showExposureDateThumb||showFilenames||showTitle||showDescriptions) {
 System.out.println("2 textToShow: "  +  textToShow);
   out.print("<div class="\"thumbText\"">");   
   if (showFilenames) {
     out.print("<small>");    
     out.print(label.replaceAll("_"," "));
 	out.print("</small><br>"); 
   }
 
   if (showTitle &&  fileTitle.length() > 0) {
     out.print("<strong>");        
     out.print(fileTitle);
     out.print("</strong><br>"); 
   }
   
   if (showDescriptions) {
     out.print(shortComment);    
   }
if (exists.originalDate) {
  if (showExposureDateThumb) ) {
     if (showDescriptions && shortComment.length()>0) {
          out.print("<br>");  
     } 
     out.print(originalDate); 
  }
 }
   
   out.print("</div>");
 }
 
 }
%>

Can anybody explain this difference in behavior?

I spent already a day on this problem, but I can't solve the problem.

Replacing
boolean textToShow=
by
textToShow=
does not help.

There is no crash if I remove this piece of code completely

Whenever I see

Unexpected input: 

I look at the last change I made and then search for a typo error, unmatched braces (mostly cured by code auto complete), an apostrophe where it should not be (copy/paste induced error). It is always down to human error.
Alas, I’m getting familiar with it.

Why is GROOVY that not doing and giving next an understandable error message?

You're joking!

An understandable message would be:

Unexpected character ')' at line 960

The BeanShell messages were already bad, but the GROOVY messages are worthless.

Another Groovy shortcoming:

GROOVY only tests the loops / branches used in the current album.

Until today my skin did contain this old BEANSHELL code:

if (showExposureDateThumb && (originalDate != void) ) {
   if (showDescriptions && shortComment.length()>0) {
          out.print("<br>");  
   } 
   out.print(originalDate); 
 }

Although the GROOVY version is already 8 months old, nobody including myself encountered this problem!

I'm glad I don't have to make a living with such crippled programming language!

That is not the correct line number!
?? where can I see which character caused the error?

Well chatGPT gives immediately the correct and understandable message:

The error in the given GROOVY code is a syntax error in the following line:

```groovy
if (showExposureDateThumb) ) {
```

There is an extra closing parenthesis `)` before the opening brace `{`. The correct line should be:

```groovy
if (showExposureDateThumb) {

GROOVY shouyld learn from that!```

André. I agree that Groovy's line number reporting is sometimes bad. Please bear in mind that we're a small company, so if you wish this to be improved, report the problem directly to the Groovy developers.