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Codex Issues / #8626

Strange characters showing up at end of some paragraphs (VS Code Ext)

Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Dec 30, 2025 by btraut Closed Jan 14, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of Codex is running?

codex-cli 0.63.0, VS Code ext 0.4.56

What subscription do you have?

Pro

Which model were you using?

_No response_

What platform is your computer?

_No response_

What issue are you seeing?

These strange characters (tokens?) have shown up in multiple sessions at seemingly random times:

<img width="1026" height="282" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ab104d13-581b-4fc5-807a-8d7ec14113eb" />

Scryfall’s advanced form exposes structured inputs for name/oracle/type, colors/identity, rarity, set/block, artist/flavor/language, numeric stats/prices, and legality-style filters; I mirrored these sections in the builder UI. citeturn4open0
The syntax model relies on field prefixes and comparison operators (ex: name:, o:, t:, >=, <=), which I mapped into the query composer and backend parser. citeturn5open0
Community usage emphasizes token-based queries such as t: and o: plus set/language filters; this reinforced the token-first approach for advanced mode. citeturn5search0

What steps can reproduce the bug?

See conversation 019b6e13-8c19-7a11-a6bb-36a65a84decf

What is the expected behavior?

_No response_

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

btraut · 8 months ago

Update! Looks like it wrote goofy chars into a markdown spec file I had it write as well. Must be model behavior.

<img width="528" height="312" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/0047bef9-d3c6-44ae-9731-8e5ba478d3a5" />

btraut · 8 months ago

Here's what ChatGPT says:

Breakdown:
• \^A → SOH (Start of Heading)
• \^B → STX (Start of Text)

They’re non-printing control chars (U+0000–U+001F). Many editors render them invisibly or as nothing at all.

Why they’re there:
• They’re almost certainly internal delimiters / sentinels used by a system to mark structured data (e.g. citations, annotations, or placeholders).
• The text cite turn5search0 is the payload between markers.
• You’re seeing the raw serialization instead of the rendered form.

etraut-openai contributor · 7 months ago

This should now be fixed. If you see this again, please let us know.