Could be the short contents? Or the short file name? > $ echo -n 'hello' > a $ par2 c -r10 -n1 a . Block size: 4 Source file count: 1 Source block count: 2 Recovery block count: 1 Recovery file count: 1 . Opening: a terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::out_of_range' what(): basic_string::at: __n (which is 1) >= this->size() (which is 1) Aborted (core dumped) $ echo $? 134