! Paragraph ended before \name was complete

Question

I recently upgraded my texlive packages at home and I cannot compile my document anymore due to the references. I googled for it for several days already and I cannot find anything recent about this issue (it does pop up from time to time apparently). Most of my entries are extracted from ADS (particularly the ones that give me troubles).

Here is a minimal entry with one of such troublesome entries.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@ARTICLE{2013APh....50...26A,
  author = {{Abeysekara}, A.~U. and {Alfaro}, R. and {Alvarez}, C. and {{\'A}lvarez}, J.~D. and
    {Tollefson}, K. and {Torres}, I. and {Ukwatta}, T.~N. and {Villase{\~n}or}, L. and
    {Weisgarber}, T. and {Westerhoff}, S. and {Wisher}, I.~G. and
    {Wood}, J. and {Yodh}, G.~B. and {Younk}, P.~W. and {Zaborov}, D. and
    {Zepeda}, A. and {Zhou}, H.},
  title = "{Sensitivity of the high altitude water Cherenkov detector to sources of multi-TeV gamma rays}",
  journal = {Astroparticle Physics},
  archivePrefix = "arXiv",
  eprint = {1306.5800},
  primaryClass = "astro-ph.HE",
  keywords = {TeV gamma-ray astronomy, Water cherenkov, Cosmic ray},
    year = 2013,
  month = dec,
  volume = 50,
  pages = {26-32},
  doi = {10.1016/j.astropartphys.2013.08.002},
  adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013APh....50...26A},
  adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[language=english, style=numeric-comp, sorting=none, backend=biber, natbib=true, doi=false, bibencoding=utf8, isbn=false]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname}

\begin{document}
This is a simple document\cite{2013APh....50...26A}
\end{document}

The error I get is

Runaway argument?
{{{hash=8b556f9238232cff536971111edddb4b}{family={{Abeysekara}}, fami\ETC.
! Paragraph ended before \name was complete.
<to be read again> 
               \par 
l.140   
?

I guess the issue comes from the combination of curly braces + accents and other 'weird characters'.

I am using biber 2.10 and texlive 2017.45XXX (current archlinux's version).

At work, where it works fine, I'm using texlive 2017.44XXX and biber 2.7

Anything I can do about it apart from trying to downgrade my texlive (which is an ugly solution)?

Answer 1

had the same problem, figured out now: you shall not nest braces 3+ levels deep.

as @gusbrs notices it has to do with the names--but only because noting accented letters in braces needs another level of nesting.

so, author = {{ÖKO} Friendly Company}, would work, but author = {{{\"O}KO} Friendly Company}, would not anymore.

even if the braces are balanced, there's an error. so author = {{{a}}}, will work, but author = {{{a} {b}}}, will not.

The last notation will throw an ! Paragraph ended before \name was complete. error.

Try to remove as much braces as possible, use utf8 encoding as already mentioned, should be enough for your entries.

N.B.: biber --tool -V *.bib will not warn you about that.

Answer 2

Egreg's recommendations are very good, but it is easy to understand your situation. I tried to narrow down what was causing the problem and, as it turns out, it is one of the names {{\'A}lvarez}. Somehow, that is resulting in a .bbl file with unbalanced braces, which gives you problems in your compilation. Once you are using bibencoding=utf8 you can change it to {Álvarez} and get rid of the error. I don't have your other problematic cases at hand, but my guess is the doble braces at the start cause the problem (even though I don't understand why they should cause a problem at all). If this is the case, the number of instances for you to fix would be already much, much smaller.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@ARTICLE{2013APh....50...26A,
  author = {{Abeysekara}, A.~U. and {Alfaro}, R. and {Alvarez}, C. and {Álvarez}, J.~D. and {Tollefson}, K. and {Torres}, I. and {Ukwatta}, T.~N. and {Villase{\~n}or}, L. and {Weisgarber}, T. and {Westerhoff}, S. and {Wisher}, I.~G. and {Wood}, J. and {Yodh}, G.~B. and {Younk}, P.~W. and {Zaborov}, D. and {Zepeda}, A. and {Zhou}, H.},
  title = "{Sensitivity of the high altitude water Cherenkov detector to sources of multi-TeV gamma rays}",
  journal = {Astroparticle Physics},
  archivePrefix = "arXiv",
  eprint = {1306.5800},
  primaryClass = "astro-ph.HE",
  keywords = {TeV gamma-ray astronomy, Water cherenkov, Cosmic ray},
    year = 2013,
  month = dec,
  volume = 50,
  pages = {26-32},
  doi = {10.1016/j.astropartphys.2013.08.002},
  adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013APh....50...26A},
  adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[language=english, style=numeric-comp, sorting=none, backend=biber, natbib=true, bibencoding=utf8, doi=false, isbn=false]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
This is a simple document\cite{2013APh....50...26A}
\end{document}

Answer 3

If I remove all the (wrong) braces around family names, there is no issue.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@ARTICLE{2013APh....50...26A,
  author = {Abeysekara, A. U. and Alfaro, R. and Alvarez, C. and 
            {\'A}lvarez, J. D. and Tollefson, K. and Torres, I. and
            Ukwatta, T. N. and Villase{\ n}or, L. and Weisgarber, T. and
            Westerhoff, S. and Wisher, I. G. and
            Wood, J. and Yodh, G. B. and Younk, P. W. and Zaborov, D. and
            Zepeda, A. and Zhou, H.},
  title = {Sensitivity of the high altitude water {Cherenkov} detector to 
           sources of multi-{TeV} gamma rays},
  journal = {Astroparticle Physics},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  eprint = {1306.5800},
  primaryClass = {astro-ph.HE},
  keywords = {TeV gamma-ray astronomy, Water cherenkov, Cosmic ray},
    year = 2013,
  month = dec,
  volume = 50,
  pages = {26-32},
  doi = {10.1016/j.astropartphys.2013.08.002},
  adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013APh....50...26A},
  adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}
\end{filecontents}

\usepackage[
  language=english,
  style=numeric-comp,
  sorting=none,
%  backend=biber,
  natbib=true,
  doi=false,
%  bibencoding=utf8,
  isbn=false
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}
This is a simple document~\cite{2013APh....50...26A}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

Also wrong are the ~ between initials. The argument to \addbibresource should contain the .bib extension.

Answer 4

Just for people with the same problem: Download the newest biber version from sourceforge (2.11 did the trick for me) and install it.

On linux, you just have to unpack the zip-file and move the biber executable to the appropriate place:

which biber
  /usr/bin/biber

sudo mv /usr/bin/biber /usr/bin/biber.old

sudo mv ./biber /usr/bin/biber

That fixed the problem for me. If I find some problems associated to this partial update down the line, I will report them here.

Answer 5

Just an update for what helped me (because none of the previous answers didn't): there are required fields, when you define your bibliography.bib file (or another file), in particular I was missing volume= in one of the @article's, which caused biber to generate some inappropriate structures.

TLDR: keep an eye on defining all required fields in bibliography, even if You don't need them (You can always write volume="").