HCL2 Document, Intentionally Invalid
An intentionally invalid HCL2 document: an unclosed block, a colon assignment, a half-quoted block label, and a heredoc whose terminator is misspelled so it swallows the remainder of the file. Four documented faults, each a distinct recovery test.
# INTENTIONALLY INVALID. Four documented faults for an HCL2 parser:
# 1. the `group` block is never closed
# 2. an attribute uses `:` instead of `=`
# 3. a heredoc opens with <<EOT but the terminator is misspelled, so it swallows the rest
# 4. a block label is quoted on one side only
job "broken" {
type: "service"
group "api {
count = 2
notes = <<EOT
this heredoc never terminates because the marker below is misspelled
EOF
}
Specifications
- Variant
- intentionally invalid
- Faults
- 4
- Braces Balanced
- false
- Unterminated Heredoc
- true
Testing contract
Expected to fail- Scenario
- Recover from an HCL2 heredoc whose terminator never appears
- Expected result
- Parsing fails with an unterminated-heredoc or unexpected-EOF error, and does not silently return a partial document
What is a .hcl file?
HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language) is the block-structured configuration language behind Terraform, Packer, Nomad, Consul, and Vault. A document is a sequence of attributes (`name = expression`) and blocks (a type, zero or more string labels, and a braced body), with support for heredocs, function calls, conditionals, and for-expressions. It is designed to be both hand-written and machine-generated, and has a documented JSON-equivalent syntax.
How to use this file
Use an example .hcl file to test HCL parsers, configuration linters, and JSON-syntax converters, exercising nested blocks with multiple labels, heredoc indentation, and comment styles (`#`, `//`, and `/* */`).
How to use this file for testing
“HCL2 Document, Intentionally Invalid” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Error handling, Config parsing, Schema validation. Deliberately corrupt and invalid files, clearly labelled, for testing how your tool fails.
Documented properties for this file: HCL · 462 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Pipeline and infrastructure fixtures are inert configuration: steps reference fictional images and scripts, and nothing here executes. Run your linter, schema validator, migrator, or policy engine against them, and expect the deprecated-syntax and intentionally invalid variants to be rejected.
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Generated by generation/pipelines.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.