ruvnet/ruflo · error · Error

Path contains null bytes

Error message

Path contains null bytes

What it means

Thrown by RvfaReader.fromFile before opening the file. Null bytes can truncate or manipulate a resolved path on systems with C-style string handling, so the library rejects them up front rather than handing an unsafe path to readFile. It is an input-sanitization guard, not a file-not-found check.

Source

Thrown at v3/@claude-flow/cli/src/appliance/rvfa-format.ts:387

    const sorted = [...header.sections].sort((a, b) => a.offset - b.offset);
    for (let i = 1; i < sorted.length; i++) {
      const prev = sorted[i - 1];
      const curr = sorted[i];
      if (prev.offset + prev.size > curr.offset) {
        throw new Error(
          `Sections "${prev.id}" and "${curr.id}" overlap ` +
            `(${prev.offset}+${prev.size} > ${curr.offset})`,
        );
      }
    }

    return new RvfaReader(buf, header);
  }

  /** Read an RVFA image from a file path. */
  static async fromFile(path: string): Promise<RvfaReader> {
    if (path.includes('\0')) {
      throw new Error('Path contains null bytes');
    }
    const data = await readFile(path);
    return RvfaReader.fromBuffer(data);
  }

  /** Return the parsed header. */
  getHeader(): RvfaHeader {
    return this.header;
  }

  /** List all sections declared in the header. */
  getSections(): RvfaSection[] {
    return this.header.sections;
  }

  /**
   * Extract and decompress a section by its id.
   *

View on GitHub (pinned to 6b01dc5a68)

Solutions

1. Sanitize the path at the trust boundary: reject or strip '\0' before calling fromFile.
2. Validate argv/env-supplied paths during CLI argument parsing, not inside the reader caller.
3. If a NUL was unintentional, regenerate the path string from a clean source.

Example fix

// before
const reader = await RvfaReader.fromFile(argv[2]);

// after
const p = argv[2];
if (typeof p !== 'string' || p.includes('\0')) {
  throw new Error('Invalid path: contains null byte');
}
const reader = await RvfaReader.fromFile(p);

function isSafeFilePath(p: unknown): boolean {
  return typeof p === 'string' && p.length > 0 && !p.includes('\0');
}
if (!isSafeFilePath(path)) {
  throw new Error('Refusing path with null byte');
}

function isSafeFilePath(p: unknown): p is string {
  return typeof p === 'string' && p.length > 0 && !p.includes('\0');
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling RvfaReader.fromFile(path) where path contains a literal NUL ('\0') character. Typical sources: an argv path that was copy-pasted from untrusted text, a path assembled by Buffer concatenation that included a 0x00 byte, or a path field read from an untrusted manifest.

Common situations: CLI invoked with a malformed argument; a test fixture built from raw buffers; an upstream tool that emits C-style null-terminated strings without trimming the terminator.

Related errors

• Validation failed: ${result.error}
• Header JSON exceeds maximum size (${headerLen} > ${MAX_HEADE
• SSRF guard: invalid URL — ${rawUrl}
• SSRF guard: only HTTPS URLs are permitted, got ${parsed.prot
• SSRF guard: private/loopback host rejected — ${host}

AI-assisted analysis of ruvnet/ruflo@6b01dc5a68 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9486e3f27b89d0cb. Report an issue: GitHub.