java.lang.NullPointerException Because of Invalid YAML Paths File

[squiggie]

I was getting the following error and couldn't figure out why.

java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "me.armar.plugins.autorank.storage.PlayTimeStorageManager.saveAllStorageProviders()" because the return value of "me.armar.plugins.autorank.Autorank.getPlayTimeStorageManager()" is null
at Autorank-5.2.2.jar/me.armar.plugins.autorank.Autorank.onDisable(Autorank.java:108) ~[Autorank-5.2.2.jar:?]
at org.bukkit.plugin.java.JavaPlugin.setEnabled(JavaPlugin.java:291) ~[paper-mojangapi-1.21-R0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar:?]
at io.papermc.paper.plugin.manager.PaperPluginInstanceManager.disablePlugin(PaperPluginInstanceManager.java:237) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at io.papermc.paper.plugin.manager.PaperPluginManagerImpl.disablePlugin(PaperPluginManagerImpl.java:114) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at org.bukkit.plugin.SimplePluginManager.disablePlugin(SimplePluginManager.java:550) ~[paper-mojangapi-1.21-R0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar:?]
at io.papermc.paper.plugin.manager.PaperPluginInstanceManager.enablePlugin(PaperPluginInstanceManager.java:206) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at io.papermc.paper.plugin.manager.PaperPluginManagerImpl.enablePlugin(PaperPluginManagerImpl.java:109) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at org.bukkit.plugin.SimplePluginManager.enablePlugin(SimplePluginManager.java:520) ~[paper-mojangapi-1.21-R0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar:?]
at org.bukkit.craftbukkit.CraftServer.enablePlugin(CraftServer.java:654) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at org.bukkit.craftbukkit.CraftServer.enablePlugins(CraftServer.java:603) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.loadWorld0(MinecraftServer.java:757) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.loadLevel(MinecraftServer.java:519) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at net.minecraft.server.dedicated.DedicatedServer.initServer(DedicatedServer.java:363) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.runServer(MinecraftServer.java:1230) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.lambda$spin$0(MinecraftServer.java:333) ~[purpur-1.21.jar:1.21-2284-4e55e26]
at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1583) ~[?:?]

I thought this has something to do with the Plugin and so I removed it and added it again and the error went away.

I then started adding my Paths back in and got the error again. So I knew it had to be an issue with the config file but the error didn't represent anything was wrong with the config file. It indicated something completely different, with some kind of Storage Manager issue.

After validating there was an extra ' at the end of my config, and removing it, the error went away.

I'm just giving a heads up in case error reporting could be improved or perhaps some kind of yaml validation could be done on the config files and report that error in the console and save someone hours digging through a yaml file line by line trying to find the issue.