! Illegal parameter number in definition of NewValue

Question

Everything works fine until I added the following URL reference to my references.bib file. The URL reference is output but I am getting the error

Illegal parameter number in definition of NewValue.

in addition.

@misc{jdk,
  author = {Oracle},
  title = {Platform, Standard Edition 7
Development Kit},
  howpublished = {url{http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/jdk-7-readme-429198.html#contents}},
  note = {Accessed: 2015}
}

MWE:

documentclass{article}
usepackage[backend=bibtex]{biblatex}
%bibliography{references} 
%addbibresource{<database>.<extension>}
addbibresource{references.bib}
begin{document}
Hallo worldcite{einstein} I do not if it cite{jdk} Tree Tree bla bla will work test nocite{Doe:2009:Online}
printbibliography
end{document}

biblatex errors

egreg · Accepted Answer

You should use the url and urldate, rather than howpublished and note:

begin{filecontents*}{jobname.bib}
@misc{jdk,
  author = {Oracle},
  title = {Platform, Standard Edition 7 Development Kit},
  url = {http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/jdk-7-readme-429198.html#contents},
  urldate = {2015},
}
end{filecontents*}

documentclass{article}

usepackage[backend=bibtex]{biblatex}

DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  urlseen={Accessed:}% %%% not `visited on'
}

addbibresource{jobname.bib}

begin{document}

Hello worldcite{einstein} I do not if it cite{jdk} will work test
nocite{Doe:2009:Online}

printbibliography

end{document}

Note that the filecontents* environment is just to make the example self contained and you can use your file (after modifying it as suggested).

Alex Meiburg · Answer

In case anyone comes here for the same reason I did, this was because I had the special character # in the title of a paper I was citing. (In particular, http://people.csail.mit.edu/shaih/pubs/01perm.pdf .) The error message was pretty inscrutable, gave me the the wrong line numbers, only showed up on the second compilation when I introduced it, and was accompanied by other messages like
illegal parameter number in definition of abs@field@title
illegal parameter number in definition of abs@field@journal

I figure I'll throw those lines in here for Googleability. In my case, I had to change
title="Zero-one permanent is #P-complete, a simpler proof"

to
title="Zero-one permanent is #P-complete, a simpler proof"

and re-compile.

! Illegal parameter number in definition of NewValue

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