nodejs/node · error

too many options passed

Error message

too many options passed

What it means

The brotli CLI records non-input option positions in a fixed-size array (MAX_OPTIONS = 24). As a defensive guard for future changes it rejects an invocation once more than ~22 options accumulate. The code comment notes this should never trigger in normal use.

Source

Thrown at deps/brotli/c/tools/brotli.c:314

  }

  for (i = 1; i < argc; ++i) {
    const char* arg = argv[i];
    /* C99 5.1.2.2.1: "members argv[0] through argv[argc-1] inclusive shall
       contain pointers to strings"; NULL and 0-length are not forbidden. */
    size_t arg_len = arg ? strlen(arg) : 0;

    if (arg_len == 0) {
      params->not_input_indices[next_option_index++] = i;
      continue;
    }

    /* Too many options. The expected longest option list is:
       "-q 0 -w 10 -o f -D d -S b -d -f -k -n -v -K --", i.e. 17 items in total.
       This check is an additional guard that is never triggered, but provides
       a guard for future changes. */
    if (next_option_index > (MAX_OPTIONS - 2)) {
      fprintf(stderr, "too many options passed\n");
      return COMMAND_INVALID;
    }

    /* Input file entry. */
    if (after_dash_dash || arg[0] != '-' || arg_len == 1) {
      input_count++;
      if (longest_path_len < arg_len) longest_path_len = arg_len;
      continue;
    }

    /* Not a file entry. */
    params->not_input_indices[next_option_index++] = i;

    /* '--' entry stop parsing arguments. */
    if (arg_len == 2 && arg[1] == '-') {
      after_dash_dash = BROTLI_TRUE;
      continue;
    }

View on GitHub (pinned to 1b2de5e052)

Solutions

1. Reduce the option count: drop redundant flags (many are mutually exclusive and would trip earlier checks anyway).
2. Feed inputs via filenames/stdin instead of encoding everything as flags.
3. If scripting brotli heavily, build the argument list from a de-duplicated structure.

Example fix

// before
brotli -q 9 -w 22 -o out -D dict -S .br -d -f -k -n -v -K -- $(seq 1 200)  # 200 flag-like tokens
// after
brotli -q 9 -d -f *.br    # inputs are filenames, not flags

# in a shell wrapper: count option tokens before calling brotli
opts=[a for a in argv if a.startswith('-')]
assert len(opts) <= 22, f'too many options ({len(opts)}); simplify the invocation'

When it happens

Trigger: Passing an unusually long argument list of flags to the brotli CLI, e.g. a script or glob that expands into many option tokens rather than input files.

Common situations: A generated/looped command line that concatenates many flags; accidental shell glob expansion producing flag-like tokens; a wrapper that re-specifies flags repeatedly.

Related errors

• quality already set
• write to standard output already set
• command already set when parsing -d
• force output overwrite already set\n
• argument --rm / -j or --keep / -k already set\n

AI-assisted analysis of nodejs/node@1b2de5e052 (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/882b648e69de63bb. Report an issue: GitHub.