Tag

error-fix

93 posts

YAML

YAML Error Could Not Find Expected Colon and Its Causes

A line with a word and no colon makes the parser fail while scanning a simple key. See the message in three parsers, the usual causes and the fixes.

6 min read

XML

Pretty Printing XML to Spot Structural Mistakes Quickly

When a minified XML file will not parse, xmllint --format and lxml refuse to indent it. A 30-line tokenizer indents what it can and flags the first mismatch.

6 min read

Flat illustration of garbled characters being decoded into readable text.

CSV

Removing Null Bytes and Control Characters From a CSV

A NUL byte can cut a PostgreSQL load short while Python keeps it. Find them with grep, strip them from 130 MB in under a second, and keep tabs and newlines.

6 min read

JSON

Why JSON Parse Fails on a Byte Order Mark and How to Fix It

A UTF-8 byte order mark in front of JSON breaks strict parsers in Python and Node. What the three bytes are, who adds them and how to read or remove them.

7 min read

Flat illustration of a spreadsheet grid with a selected cell and a formula bar.

CSV

How to Open a UTF8 CSV in Excel Without Garbled Text

Excel on Windows often shows UTF-8 accents as Ã symbols. Add a BOM when you write the file, or import it with the right encoding, and check the bytes first.

7 min read

XML

Encoding Mismatch Errors in XML Documents From Mixed Sources

When an XML feed mixes encodings or was encoded twice: why detectors guess wrong on short text, the UTF-8 first rule and per-line fallback.

7 min read

CSV

Fixing Mojibake in a CSV Without Losing Any More Data

Repair text like JosÃ© inside a CSV by reversing the wrong decode, with ftfy or two lines of Python, and learn which garbling can never be undone.

7 min read

YAML

YAML Error Did Not Find Expected Key and How to Fix It

Why a line indented between two levels raises did not find expected key, how PyYAML words it differently, and how to realign. Output from three parsers.

6 min read

JSON

Python JSONDecodeError Extra Data and Concatenated Objects

Extra data means a valid JSON value was followed by more text. Why concatenated objects and JSON Lines trigger it and three ways to read them in Python.

7 min read