What causes "the file is empty" in owasp-amass/amass?

Populate the wordlist file with one entry per line.

the file is empty

Error message

the file is empty

What it means

GetListFromFile reads a wordlist file (optionally gzip-compressed) and errors out early when file.Stat() reports a size of 0. An empty file can never yield a useful list, so the loader fails fast with this message instead of returning an empty result.

Source

Thrown at config/wordlist.go:98

// GetListFromFile reads a wordlist text or gzip file and returns the slice of words.
func GetListFromFile(path string) ([]string, error) {
	var reader io.Reader

	absPath, err := filepath.Abs(path)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("failed to get absolute path: %v", err)
	}

	file, err := os.Open(absPath)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("error opening the file %s: %v", absPath, err)
	}
	defer func() { _ = file.Close() }()
	reader = file

	if finfo, err := file.Stat(); err == nil && finfo.Size() == 0 {
		return nil, errors.New("the file is empty")
	}

	if gz, err := getGzipReader(file, absPath); err == nil {
		defer func() { _ = gz.Close() }()
		reader = gz
	}

	return GetWordList(reader)
}

func getGzipReader(file *os.File, absPath string) (*gzip.Reader, error) {
	finfo, err := file.Stat()
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

	if finfo.Size() < 512 {
		return nil, errors.New("file cannot be checked for compression")

View on GitHub (pinned to 79299dce87)

Solutions

Populate the wordlist file with one entry per line.
Point the config/flag at a non-empty wordlist file.
Check file size (ls -l / os.Stat) before running.
Re-download the wordlist if it was truncated.

Example fix

# before
wordlist = /path/to/empty.txt   # 0 bytes
# after
wordlist = /usr/share/wordlists/subdomains.txt

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

info, err := os.Stat(path)
if err != nil { return err }
if info.Size() == 0 { return fmt.Errorf("wordlist %s is empty", path) }

Try / catch

list, err := GetListFromFile(path)
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "the file is empty") {
        // fall back to a default wordlist or abort with a clear message
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Check file size before passing wordlist paths.
Verify downloads completed (checksum/size).
Avoid committing empty placeholder wordlist files.
Use well-known wordlists from package resources.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling GetListFromFile (from loadBruteForceSettings, loadAlterationSettings, or CLIWorkflow) with a path to a zero-byte file — created via 'touch wordlist.txt', truncated by a failed download, or never populated.

Common situations: Pointing the wordlist config at an empty placeholder file, a download that failed mid-way, or a volume mount issue that hid the real file contents.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to read file", EACCES, ENOENT and "could not read <path>" errors: when a program can't read a file from disk — this error's family across 49 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of owasp-amass/amass@79299dce87 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/819bc574d5edb62c. Report an issue: GitHub.