owasp-amass/amass · error

failed to parse address

Error message

failed to parse address

What it means

The C call libpostal_parse_address returned a NULL response pointer, meaning libpostal itself failed to parse the (valid UTF-8) address string with the given parser options. This is a generic nil-result guard around the C API; common causes are empty/whitespace input or missing libpostal language data for the requested options.

Solutions

1. Trim whitespace and reject empty address strings before invoking the parser
2. Check that libpostal's data files cover the requested language/country options
3. Fall back to returning the raw address as a single component when parsing is not critical to the caller

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at internal/libpostal/cgo_specific.go:80 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

Understand the failure class

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

AI-assisted analysis of owasp-amass/amass@79299dce87 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/86c98a15e752863b. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at internal/libpostal/cgo_specific.go:80

	cOptions := C.libpostal_get_address_parser_default_options()
	if options.Language != "" {
		cLanguage := C.CString(options.Language)
		defer C.free(unsafe.Pointer(cLanguage))

		cOptions.language = cLanguage
	}

	if options.Country != "" {
		cCountry := C.CString(options.Country)
		defer C.free(unsafe.Pointer(cCountry))

		cOptions.country = cCountry
	}

	cAddressParserResponsePtr := C.libpostal_parse_address(cAddress, cOptions)
	if cAddressParserResponsePtr == nil {
		return nil, errors.New("failed to parse address")
	}
	cAddressParserResponse := *cAddressParserResponsePtr

	cNumComponents := cAddressParserResponse.num_components
	cComponents := cAddressParserResponse.components
	cLabels := cAddressParserResponse.labels
	numComponents := uint64(cNumComponents)
	parsedComponents := make([]ParsedComponent, numComponents)

	// Accessing a C array
	cComponentsPtr := (*[1 << 30](*C.char))(unsafe.Pointer(cComponents))[:numComponents:numComponents]
	cLabelsPtr := (*[1 << 30](*C.char))(unsafe.Pointer(cLabels))[:numComponents:numComponents]

	var i uint64
	for i = range numComponents {
		parsedComponents[i] = ParsedComponent{
			Label: C.GoString(cLabelsPtr[i]),
			Value: C.GoString(cComponentsPtr[i]),

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