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claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix [BUG] Claude Code CLI hangs with whitespace-only prompt and empty stdin [1 participants]

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anthropics/claude-code#58857•Fetched 2026-05-14 03:37:45
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Error Messages/Logs

Code Example

N/A
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Preflight Checklist

  • I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
  • This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
  • I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Claude Code print mode appears to hang when given a whitespace-only prompt with an empty stdin. Instead of rejecting the input or exiting cleanly, the process stays running until killed by a timeout.

Reproducer:

  1. Create an empty file: /tmp/empty
  2. Run Claude Code in print mode with a whitespace-only prompt and redirect stdin from the empty file.
  3. Wrap the command with a 20-second timeout.
  4. The process exits with timeout status 124, showing it did not terminate on its own. or use these commands

/usr/bin/time -v timeout 20s claude -p " " < /tmp/empty or claude -p " " and claude -p " " < empty file The CLI hangs until externally killed. This works also with -c -p " space"

Impact: This is a low-severity local DoS / reliability issue that may affect scripts, so not a major issue.

What Should Happen?

Should Claude not hang, I guess? Maybe a better parser?

Error Messages/Logs

N/A

Steps to Reproduce

Reproducer:

  1. Create an empty file: /tmp/empty
  2. Run Claude Code in print mode with a whitespace-only prompt and redirect stdin from the empty file.
  3. Wrap the command with a 20-second timeout.
  4. The process exits with timeout status 124, showing it did not terminate on its own. or use these commands

/usr/bin/time -v timeout 20s claude -p " " < /tmp/empty or claude -p " " and claude -p " " < empty file The CLI hangs until externally killed. This works also with -c -p " space"

Claude Model

Not sure / Multiple models

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

No response

Claude Code Version

2.1.140 (Claude Code)

Platform

Other

Operating System

Ubuntu/Debian Linux

Terminal/Shell

Non-interactive/CI environment

Additional Information

Best

  • Kenan Alghythee

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#callback error#memory management#API rate limit#retriever error#indexing error

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claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix [BUG] Claude Code CLI hangs with whitespace-only prompt and empty stdin [1 participants]