separator must be valid UTF-8 (use escape sequences to provi

Error message

separator must be valid UTF-8 (use escape sequences to provide a separator that is not valid UTF-8)

What it means

Error "separator must be valid UTF-8 (use escape sequences to provide a separator that is not valid UTF-8)" thrown in BurntSushi/ripgrep.

Source

Thrown at crates/core/flags/lowargs.rs:497

/// Represents the separator to use between non-contiguous sections of
/// contextual lines.
///
/// The default is `--`.
#[derive(Clone, Debug, Eq, PartialEq)]
pub(crate) struct ContextSeparator(Option<BString>);

impl Default for ContextSeparator {
    fn default() -> ContextSeparator {
        ContextSeparator(Some(BString::from("--")))
    }
}

impl ContextSeparator {
    /// Create a new context separator from the user provided argument. This
    /// handles unescaping.
    pub(crate) fn new(os: &OsStr) -> anyhow::Result<ContextSeparator> {
        let Some(string) = os.to_str() else {
            anyhow::bail!(
                "separator must be valid UTF-8 (use escape sequences \
                 to provide a separator that is not valid UTF-8)"
            )
        };
        Ok(ContextSeparator(Some(Vec::unescape_bytes(string).into())))
    }

    /// Creates a new separator that instructs the printer to disable contextual
    /// separators entirely.
    pub(crate) fn disabled() -> ContextSeparator {
        ContextSeparator(None)
    }

    /// Return the raw bytes of this separator.
    ///
    /// If context separators were disabled, then this returns `None`.
    ///
    /// Note that this may return a `Some` variant with zero bytes.

View on GitHub (pinned to 3fce3b5bb0)

Solutions

Use a separator that is valid UTF-8
Provide arbitrary bytes via escape sequences for the separator

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at crates/core/flags/lowargs.rs:497 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of BurntSushi/ripgrep@3fce3b5bb0 (2026-08-06). Data as JSON: /data/errors/054d0a4709e58703.json. Report an issue: GitHub.