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How can we trace back to the actual bib file the (most likely formatting) error that makes biber die?

The error I get from the biber run is:

[1447] Utils.pm:160> ERROR - BibTeX subsystem: /tmp/wLejLsez1J/Passivity.bib_28895.utf8, line 8851, syntax error: found ",", expected one of: number, name (entry type, key, field, or macro name), end of entry ("}" or ")") or quoted string ({...} or "...")

All this tells me is that there is an error in the file Passivity.bib. That file has several hundred refs, however. How can I get to the problematic one?

The file in /tmp that biber refers to does not exist any longer at the end of biber's run.

I tried checking the .blg file produced by biber, but it contains exactly the same information as the line above.

stefano
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    By going to the line mentioned in the error message: line 8851. Probably there is a second comma. – Ulrike Fischer Sep 26 '14 at 16:10
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    Thanks Ulrike! I didn't know that the line number in the error message actually referred back to the original bib file. I took it as a reference to the disappeared tmp file. Problem solved! (it was indeed a trivial syntax error, as you guessed) – stefano Sep 26 '14 at 16:23
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    This question appears to be off-topic because it is about a trivial syntax error. – Sean Allred Sep 26 '14 at 16:27
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    @SeanAllred: The error was trivial---where to find it in the bib file was not. In fact I would dare say it is a bug in biber---the error message should make clear that /tmp/wLejLsez1J/Passivity.bib_28895.utf8, line 8851 actually means line 8851 of Passivity.bib. – stefano Sep 26 '14 at 18:50
  • @stefano: where did you find that error message with the line number in it? I had a similar problem (http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/229866/4009), but the .blg file did not give any line number where the error occured. – MostlyHarmless Feb 25 '15 at 05:12
  • @Martin: the error message was in biber's standard output to console. I see that Ulrike F. (in the other question you linked to) suggests better command line biber options to debug these kind of problems. But apparently they didn.t work in your case either – stefano Feb 25 '15 at 13:46

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