Bug: white space in the 'QNAME' field in bam-input-file causes invalid but completed alignment

[lutrarutra]

STAR version 2.7.11b

Given input A00XXX:XXX:XXX:XXX:1000 1:N:0:YYY+YYY, STAR aligner assumes wrong column (most likely explanation) as the SEQ resulting in 0 aligned reads.

In the output log STAR reports: Average input read length 1

No exception is raised.

Relevant input arguments:

    --readFilesType SAM SE \
    --readFilesCommand "samtools view -f 4" 

I know there is not supposed to be a white space in the QNAME, but in some cases there still is, perhaps copied from the fastq.gz by some hacky script/software.

Maybe STAR aligner could check that there is no white-space, and if there is, raise warning/error or temporarily fix the QNAME?