puppetlabs/puppet · error · Puppet::Error

No input to parse given on command line or stdin

Error message

No input to parse given on command line or stdin

What it means

`puppet parser dump` needs Puppet code from one of three sources: the -e inline string, file arguments, or piped (non-TTY) STDIN. When none is available — no -e, no positional args, and STDIN is an interactive terminal — it raises Puppet::Error rather than silently blocking on keyboard input.

Source

Thrown at lib/puppet/face/parser.rb:154

    option('--format ' + _('<old, pn, or json>')) do
      summary _("Get result in 'old' (deprecated format), 'pn' (new format), or 'json' (new format in JSON).")
    end

    option('--pretty') do
      summary _('Pretty print output. Only applicable together with --format pn or json')
    end

    when_invoked do |*args|
      require_relative '../../puppet/pops'
      options = args.pop
      if options[:e]
        dump_parse(options[:e], 'command-line-string', options, false)
      elsif args.empty?
        if !STDIN.tty?
          dump_parse(STDIN.read, 'stdin', options, false)
        else
          raise Puppet::Error, _("No input to parse given on command line or stdin")
        end
      else
        files = args
        available_files = files.select do |file|
          Puppet::FileSystem.exist?(file)
        end
        missing_files = files - available_files

        dumps = available_files.collect do |file|
          dump_parse(Puppet::FileSystem.read(file, :encoding => 'utf-8'), file, options)
        end.join("")

        if missing_files.empty?
          dumps
        else
          dumps + _("One or more file(s) specified did not exist:\n") + missing_files.collect { |f| "   #{f}" }.join("\n")
        end
      end

View on GitHub (pinned to e227c27540)

Solutions

1. Pass code inline: `puppet parser dump -e 'notify { "x": }'`
2. Pass manifest files: `puppet parser dump init.pp`
3. Pipe code in: `cat init.pp | puppet parser dump`

Example fix

# before
puppet parser dump
# after
puppet parser dump -e 'notify { "hello": message => "hi" }'

abort 'nothing to parse: pass -e, file arguments, or pipe stdin' if ARGV.empty? && !ENV.key?('PUPPET_PARSER_EXPR') && $stdin.tty? && !options[:e]

When it happens

Trigger: Bare `puppet parser dump` in an interactive shell; a wrapper that forgets to pass -e or file paths; a pipeline where the producer command failed so STDIN fell back to the TTY.

Common situations: Exploring the new parser output interactively; CI harnesses calling parser dump with dynamically built argument lists that end up empty.

Related errors

• The legacy subcommand '%{sub_command}' does not support supp
• One or more file(s) specified did not exist: %{files}
• Error parsing arguments
• The puppet agent command does not take parameters
• puppet %{face} %{action} takes %{arg_count} argument, but yo

AI-assisted analysis of puppetlabs/puppet@e227c27540 (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/134e08771b7e8c18. Report an issue: GitHub.