pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error

The function call isCodepage requires 2 arguments.

Error message

The function call isCodepage requires 2 arguments.

What it means

isCodepage tests whether a string can be encoded/decoded in a given codepage within Kettle's JavaScript step. It requires exactly 2 arguments: the string and the codepage name. With any other argument count it throws this RuntimeError; note that encoding failures inside the try block only set the result to false, they do not throw.

Solutions

1. Call with exactly two arguments: isCodepage(myString, 'UTF-8')
2. Quote the codepage name and use a valid charset identifier (e.g. 'ISO-8859-1', 'US-ASCII')
3. Validate the string argument is defined before the call

Example fix

// before
var ok = isCodepage(value);
// after
var ok = isCodepage(value, 'ISO-8859-1');

if (arguments.length !== 2) throw new Error('isCodepage(str, codepage) requires 2 arguments');

try { var ok = isCodepage(str, cp); } catch (e) { if (String(e).indexOf('requires 2 arguments') >= 0) { /* add codepage arg */ } }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling isCodepage('text') without the codepage name, or adding extra arguments such as a default-value flag.

Common situations: Ported scripts from other engines where isCodepage took one argument; confusion with Java's Charset API wrappers.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• The function call dateAdd requires 3 arguments.
• The function call dateDiff requires 3 arguments.
• The function call fillString requires 2 arguments.
• The function call fireToDB requires 2 arguments.
• The function call getFileExtension is not valid.

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/518db13b6e9a79c3. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at engine/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/trans/steps/scriptvalues_mod/ScriptValuesAddedFunctions.java:764

    if ( ArgList.length == 2 ) {
      try {
        if ( isNull( ArgList, new int[] { 0, 1 } ) ) {
          return null;
        } else if ( isUndefined( ArgList, new int[] { 0, 1 } ) ) {
          return Context.getUndefinedValue();
        }
        String strValueToCheck = Context.toString( ArgList[0] );
        String strCodePage = Context.toString( ArgList[1] );
        byte[] bytearray = strValueToCheck.getBytes();
        CharsetDecoder d = Charset.forName( strCodePage ).newDecoder();
        CharBuffer r = d.decode( ByteBuffer.wrap( bytearray ) );
        r.toString();
        bRC = true;
      } catch ( Exception e ) {
        bRC = false;
      }
    } else {
      throw Context.reportRuntimeError( "The function call isCodepage requires 2 arguments." );
    }
    return Boolean.valueOf( bRC );
  }

  public static String ltrim( Context actualContext, Scriptable actualObject, Object[] ArgList,
    Function FunctionContext ) {
    try {
      if ( ArgList.length == 1 ) {
        if ( isNull( ArgList[0] ) ) {
          return null;
        } else if ( isUndefined( ArgList[0] ) ) {
          return (String) Context.getUndefinedValue();
        }
        String strValueToTrim = Context.toString( ArgList[0] );
        return strValueToTrim.replaceAll( "^\\s+", "" );
      } else {
        throw Context.reportRuntimeError( "The function call ltrim requires 1 argument." );
      }

View on GitHub (pinned to f3058517a1)