pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error · KettleFileException

TextFileInput.Log.Error.ExceptionReadingLine

TextFileInput.Log.Error.ExceptionReadingLine

Error message

TextFileInput.Log.Error.ExceptionReadingLine

What it means

getLine() wraps any unexpected Exception thrown while reading characters from the file into a KettleFileException with this message — but only when no partial line has been accumulated (line.length()==0). If some characters were already read, they are returned as the line instead. The original exception is attached as the cause.

Solutions

  1. Check the attached cause (e.toString() is embedded in the message) to identify the real I/O or charset problem.
  2. Verify the step's Encoding setting matches the file's actual encoding (UTF-8 vs ISO-8859-1 etc.).
  3. Re-check the file exists and is readable/stable on disk or the network location during the transformation run.
  4. If remote (SFTP/VFS), test connectivity and copy the file locally before processing.

Example fix

// before: Encoding=UTF-8 but file is ISO-8859-1 with invalid byte sequences
// after: set the Text File Input step Encoding to ISO-8859-1
//   (Content tab -> Encoding -> ISO-8859-1) to match the source file
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

// Verify the file decodes cleanly with the configured charset before processing
Charset cs = Charset.forName(encoding);
new String(Files.readAllBytes(path), cs); // throws MalformedInputException-related errors early
CharsetDecoder strict = cs.newDecoder();
strict.decode(ByteBuffer.wrap(Files.readAllBytes(path)));

Try / catch

try {
  line = getLine();
} catch (KettleFileException e) {
  Throwable cause = e.getCause();
  logError("Line read failed: " + cause, e);
  if (isRecoverableIO(cause)) { retryWithBackoff(); } else { failStep(); }
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Any I/O or decoding failure during reader.read() in getLine() (e.g. character-decoding errors, stream closed, underlying file system error) at the very start of a line.

Common situations: Encoding mismatches (file bytes invalid for the chosen character set), files removed or truncated mid-read on network shares, VFS connection drops while reading remote files.

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 pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7b31fdfa7f7cc801. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at engine/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/trans/steps/textfileinput/TextFileInput.java:153

            c = reader.read();

            if ( encodingType.isLinefeed( c ) ) {
              return line.toString();
            } else if ( !encodingType.isReturn( c ) ) {
              if ( c >= 0 ) {
                line.append( (char) c );
              }
            }
          }
          break;
        default:
          break;
      }
    } catch ( KettleFileException e ) {
      throw e;
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      if ( line.length() == 0 ) {
        throw new KettleFileException( BaseMessages.getString( PKG, "TextFileInput.Log.Error.ExceptionReadingLine", e
            .toString() ), e );
      }
      return line.toString();
    }
    if ( line.length() > 0 ) {
      return line.toString();
    }

    return null;
  }

  @Deprecated
  public static final String[] guessStringsFromLine( LogChannelInterface log, String line, TextFileInputMeta inf,
      String delimiter ) throws KettleException {
    return guessStringsFromLine( new Variables(), log, line, inf, delimiter, StringUtil.substituteHex( inf
        .getEnclosure() ), StringUtil.substituteHex( inf.getEscapeCharacter() ) );
  }

View on GitHub (pinned to f3058517a1)