From d15f1d131f8775c3e154b27185baf1b3870c8689 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Cursor Agent <cursoragent@cursor.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2026 12:26:40 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] fix parser error highlight offsets for non-suffix slices

Co-authored-by: Thomas Pelletier <thomas@pelletier.dev>
---
 errors_test.go     | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
 unstable/parser.go | 19 ++++++++++++++++---
 2 files changed, 37 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/errors_test.go b/errors_test.go
index 3703bd0..014c164 100644
--- a/errors_test.go
+++ b/errors_test.go
@@ -286,6 +286,27 @@ func TestDecodeError_Position(t *testing.T) {
 	}
 }
 
+func TestDecodeError_InvalidKeyStartAfterComment(t *testing.T) {
+	doc := "# comment\n= \"value\""
+
+	var out map[string]string
+	err := Unmarshal([]byte(doc), &out)
+	assert.Error(t, err)
+
+	var derr *DecodeError
+	if !errors.As(err, &derr) {
+		t.Fatal("error not in expected format")
+	}
+
+	row, col := derr.Position()
+	assert.Equal(t, 2, row)
+	assert.Equal(t, 1, col)
+	assert.Equal(t, "toml: invalid character at start of key: =", derr.Error())
+	assert.Equal(t, `1| # comment
+2| = "value"
+ | ~ invalid character at start of key: =`, derr.String())
+}
+
 func TestStrictErrorUnwrap(t *testing.T) {
 	fo := bytes.NewBufferString(`
 Missing = 1
diff --git a/unstable/parser.go b/unstable/parser.go
index e7c68dc..962cbfa 100644
--- a/unstable/parser.go
+++ b/unstable/parser.go
@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ package unstable
 import (
 	"bytes"
 	"fmt"
+	"reflect"
 	"unicode"
 
 	"github.com/pelletier/go-toml/v2/internal/characters"
@@ -83,10 +84,22 @@ func (p *Parser) rangeOfToken(token, rest []byte) Range {
 }
 
 // subsliceOffset returns the byte offset of subslice b within p.data.
-// b must be a suffix (tail) of p.data.
+// b must share the same backing array as p.data.
 func (p *Parser) subsliceOffset(b []byte) int {
-	// b is a suffix of p.data, so its offset is len(p.data) - len(b)
-	return len(p.data) - len(b)
+	if len(b) == 0 {
+		// Most callers pass suffix slices, so preserve EOF behavior.
+		return len(p.data)
+	}
+
+	dataPtr := reflect.ValueOf(p.data).Pointer()
+	subPtr := reflect.ValueOf(b).Pointer()
+
+	offset := int(subPtr - dataPtr)
+	if offset < 0 || offset+len(b) > len(p.data) {
+		panic("subslice is not within parser input")
+	}
+
+	return offset
 }
 
 // Raw returns the slice corresponding to the bytes in the given range.