Malformed input or input contains unmappable characters

[dattachandan]

What happened?

When using the exporter class(org.mitre.synthea.export.Exporter) and running the run_synthea app, I can see characters in XML that are causing exceptions, have anyone seen this before and recommend any fix?

Environment

- OS:Ubuntu 20.04
- Java: JDK 8 and 11

Relevant log output

java.nio.file.InvalidPathException: Malformed input or input contains unmappable characters: Raquel318_Henr?quez109_4b33f163-b07b-4ec7-b579-5ac453371d4f.xml
        at sun.nio.fs.UnixPath.encode(UnixPath.java:147)
        at sun.nio.fs.UnixPath.<init>(UnixPath.java:71)
        at sun.nio.fs.UnixFileSystem.getPath(UnixFileSystem.java:281)
        at sun.nio.fs.AbstractPath.resolve(AbstractPath.java:53)
        at org.mitre.synthea.export.Exporter.exportRecord(Exporter.java:164)
        at org.mitre.synthea.export.Exporter.export(Exporter.java:56)
        at org.healthlink.exporter.syntheainterface.PatientGenerator.generatePerson(PatientGenerator.java:389)
        at org.healthlink.exporter.syntheainterface.PatientGenerator.lambda$run$2(PatientGenerator.java:221)
        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:750)

[dehall]

Yes we've seen this before with certain file systems that don't support the accented characters in filenames. (#569) For posterity, do you happen to know the type of filesystem that files are being written to?

The quickest fix is to use only uuid filenames instead of including patient names in filenames, by setting the exporter.use_uuid_filenames config setting to true either in src/main/resources/synthea.properties or on the command line ./run_synthea --exporter.use_uuid_filenames=true ...

Alternatively if you're willing to make code changes you can add some filename sanitization to the org.mitre.synthea.export.Exporter.filename method

[dattachandan]

Yes we've seen this before with certain file systems that don't support the accented characters in filenames. (#569) For posterity, do you happen to know the type of filesystem that files are being written to?

The quickest fix is to use only uuid filenames instead of including patient names in filenames, by setting the exporter.use_uuid_filenames config setting to true either in src/main/resources/synthea.properties or on the command line ./run_synthea --exporter.use_uuid_filenames=true ...

Alternatively if you're willing to make code changes you can add some filename sanitization to the org.mitre.synthea.export.Exporter.filename method

I was running it on macOS Monterrey with Apple File System (APFS). It also happened in a ext4 ubuntu volume