pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error · RuntimeException

The function call getShortFilename throw an error : +…

Error message

The function call getShortFilename throw an error :  + e.toString()

What it means

This is the IOException handler of ScriptAddedFunctions.getShortFilename(): failures resolving or inspecting the VFS FileObject (KettleVFS.getFileObject, file.exists(), getName()) are re-thrown as RuntimeException with the message 'The function call getShortFilename throw an error : ' plus e.toString(). It indicates an I/O or transport problem rather than a simple 'file missing' condition.

Solutions

1. Inspect the appended e.toString() for the concrete IOException (unknown host, auth failure, malformed URI) and fix that cause.
2. Validate/encode the VFS URL (escape spaces and special chars) before calling.
3. Check remote connectivity and credentials; add a retry step for transient network errors.
4. Catch the RuntimeException in the JavaScript step to log and skip bad rows.
5. Fall back to computing the short name locally (substring after last '/' or '\\') when only the name is needed and the file cannot be inspected.

Example fix

// before
var name = getShortFilename( "/data/my file.txt" ); // unescaped space -> IOException
// after
var name = getShortFilename( "file:///data/my%20file.txt" );

// sanity-check the path/URL before the call
if ( typeof p === "string" && p.length > 0 && p.indexOf(" ") < 0 ) { name = getShortFilename(p); }

function isPlainPath(v) { return typeof v === "string" && /^[A-Za-z0-9_\-.:\/\\]+$/.test(v); }

try { name = getShortFilename(p); } catch (e) { var m = String(e.message); if (m.indexOf("throw an error") >= 0) { Logger.logError("getShortFilename IO: " + m); } }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling getShortFilename(path) when the VFS layer throws IOException: unreachable SFTP/HTTP host, invalid VFS URI, network failure mid-call, or permission/IO errors reading the file's metadata.

Common situations: Remote files over sftp/webdav whose server is down or credentials expired; paths with unescaped spaces/special characters producing malformed URIs; transient network drops during large batch transformations.

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

• The function call isFolder throw an error : + e.toString()
• KettleException( e )
• Unable to get VFS File object for filename '
• [ + ArgList[0] + ] is not a folder!
• Error opening new file

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8d6014de9035aaa2. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at engine/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/trans/steps/script/ScriptAddedFunctions.java:2233

        if ( ArgList[0].equals( null ) ) {
          return null;
        }
        FileObject file = null;

        try {
          // Source file
          file = KettleVFS.getInstance( bowl ).getFileObject( (String) ArgList[0] );
          String Filename = null;
          if ( file.exists() ) {
            Filename = file.getName().getBaseName();

          } else {
            throw new RuntimeException( "file [" + ArgList[0] + "] can not be found!" );
          }

          return Filename;
        } catch ( IOException e ) {
          throw new RuntimeException( "The function call getShortFilename throw an error : " + e.toString() );
        } finally {
          if ( file != null ) {
            try {
              file.close();
            } catch ( Exception e ) {
              // Ignore errors
            }
          }
        }

      } else {
        throw new RuntimeException( "The function call getShortFilename is not valid." );
      }
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new RuntimeException( e.toString() );
    }
  }

View on GitHub (pinned to f3058517a1)