Uninitialized Attributes top level causes error

[atz]

[2012-11-01T03:02:10+00:00] INFO: Storing updated cookbooks/user/attributes/default.rb in the cache.

Recipe Compile Error in /var/chef/cache/cookbooks/user/attributes/default.rb

IndexError

string not matched

Cookbook Trace:

/var/chef/cache/cookbooks/user/attributes/default.rb:24:in []=' /var/chef/cache/cookbooks/user/attributes/default.rb:24:infrom_file'

Relevant File Content:

/var/chef/cache/cookbooks/user/attributes/default.rb:

19: # limitations under the License.
20: #
21:
22: case platform
23: when 'debian','ubuntu','redhat','centos','amazon','scientific','fedora','freebsd','suse'
24>> default['user']['home_root'] = "/home"
25: default['user']['default_shell'] = "/bin/bash"
26: when 'openbsd'
27: default['user']['home_root'] = "/home"
28: default['user']['default_shell'] = "/bin/ksh"
29: when 'mac_os_x', 'mac_os_x_server'
30: default['user']['home_root'] = "/Users"
31: default['user']['default_shell'] = "/bin/bash"
32: else
33: default['user']['home_root'] = "/home"

[2012-11-01T03:02:10+00:00] ERROR: Running exception handlers
[2012-11-01T03:02:10+00:00] FATAL: Saving node information to /var/chef/cache/failed-run-data.json
[2012-11-01T03:02:10+00:00] ERROR: Exception handlers complete
[2012-11-01T03:02:10+00:00] FATAL: Stacktrace dumped to /var/chef/cache/chef-stacktrace.out
[2012-11-01T03:02:10+00:00] FATAL: IndexError: string not matched

[ranjib]

chef should autovivify the attributes. I'll try to reproduce this. ideally we should not need to initialize the parent attribute

[theckman]

@atz I've just become a collaborator on this project and I'm looking at old tickets. Are you still having issues with this? Are you able to provide some steps to reproduce the problem?