Solved: ERROR: Version in “./docker-compose.yml” is invalid & found character ‘\t’ that cannot start any token
In this post, we will look how to resolve two error messages that we can face while writing docker compose file.
Error 1: found character ‘\t’ that cannot start any token
$ docker-compose config ERROR: yaml.scanner.ScannerError: while scanning for the next token found character '\t' that cannot start any token in "./docker-compose.yml", line 6, column 1
Solution
Edit docker-compose.yml file and correct the spacing at the start of lines.
The error message specifies that there is “\t” i.e. a TAB character exists in the start of the line that should be corrected.
Error 2: ERROR: Version in “./docker-compose.yml” is invalid – it should be a string.
$ docker-compose config ERROR: Version in "./docker-compose.yml" is invalid - it should be a string.
Solution
We need to edit and make sure the version number is inside single quotes i.e. ”.
### Correct file with single quotes and run config command to check no error message is reported.
$ docker-compose config
services:
database:
image: redis
web:
image: nginx
version: '3.0'
### Corrected file:
$ cat docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
services:
web:
image: nginx
database:
image: redis