gatsbyjs/gatsby · error

Invalid match specified: "${line.trim()}"

Error message

Invalid match specified: "${line.trim()}"

What it means

Directive-parser warning in gatsby-remark-prismjs: for a `line`/`range` highlight directive, the range portion could not be parsed (rangeParser returned no entries, or the range segment was malformed), so the requested lines are not highlighted/flagged. Only that directive is ignored; highlighting of the block continues.

Source

Thrown at packages/gatsby-remark-prismjs/src/directives.js:103

    case `line`:
      actions.flag(feature, index, flagSource)
      actions.stripComment(index)
      break
    case `range`:
      actions.hide(index)

      if (directiveRange) {
        const strippedDirectiveRange = directiveRange.slice(1, -1)
        const range = rangeParser(strippedDirectiveRange)
        if (range.length > 0) {
          range.forEach(relativeIndex => {
            actions.flag(feature, index + relativeIndex, flagSource)
          })
          break
        }
      }

      console.warn(`Invalid match specified: "${line.trim()}"`)
      break
  }
}

module.exports = function highlightLineRange(code, highlights = []) {
  if (highlights.length > 0 || HIGHLIGHT_DIRECTIVE.test(code)) {
    // HACK split multiline spans with line separators inside into multiple spans
    // separated by line separator - this fixes line highlighting behaviour for
    //  - plain-text in jsx,
    //  - tripple-quoted-string in python,
    //  - comment in c-like languages (including javascript), etc.
    code = code.replace(MULTILINE_TOKEN_SPAN, (match, token) =>
      match.replace(/\n/g, `</span>\n<span class="token ${token}">`)
    )
  }

  const split = code.split(`\n`)
  const lines = split.map(code => {

View on GitHub (pinned to e85d62f177)

Solutions

1. Fix the directive range syntax, e.g. {1,3-5} after the language tag

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at packages/gatsby-remark-prismjs/src/directives.js:103 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of gatsbyjs/gatsby@e85d62f177 (2026-08-26). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0c045095806ccd6f. Report an issue: GitHub.