I'm getting “found character that cannot start any token while scanning for the next token”

Question

I have been running Ruby on Rails on my laptop for about a month now, but when I wanted to run the server in this instance (and it was working fine a few hours ago) I now re

Answer 1

YAML does not accept TAB characters (\t) for indentation. Look for those in your config/application.yml and replace with 2 spaces.

(or there may be other syntax errors, as suggested by Ryan. But I'm betting on this one)

Answer 2

[]

development: DEV_DB_PASSWORD: 'qaz' staging: STAG_DB_PASSWORD: 'qaz'

there should not be any space in every next line

Answer 3

May not be your specific example, but the title of the Stack Overflow resulted in me being on this post so for those working with this error, it may be due to:

en.yml or a translation yml or any yaml...

That doesn't have double quotes around a string interpolation

points:
  other: %{points} points

Correction:

points:
  other: "%{points} points"

Answer 4

This error is originating from the Figaro gem, which would indicate to me that you probably have a syntax error in config/application.yml. Double check this file for any incorrect YAML syntax.

Answer 5

I have the same issue with yours. I'm sure its the TAB characters (\t) issue. Please replace with 2 spaces.

Answer 6

You should check all important configuration files that contains YAML. I had the same error when tried to rake db:seed, and it turns out that I had TAB character in commented block in config/database.yml.

If you are not sure, use some online YAML parser, i.e. http://yaml-online-parser.appspot.com/.