Part of the problem, of course, is that it isn’t exactly small.   (Another problem is that the customer really does not want anything going in-or-out the front door, and since they pay very promptly I have to play along.)

I’m sorta hoping that someone out there will just be able to nod and say ... “oh yeah, that happened to me once, too.”   And here’s how I fixed it...”   We all know what it’s like when we know that the computer is doing something totally bogus, but we don’t yet know what it is. :-)

I am reasonably confident that the constructor is being given the grammar-string that I intend to be giving it.   And I am reasonably sure that it is trying to tell me that the grammar is busted.   (I am absolutely sure that it contains many bugs and tpyos.)

(Oh, no... no... it couldn’t be the programmer ... no, no...)   ;-)