# pandas.errors.ParserError: Error tokenizing data. C error: Expected 5 fields in line 42, saw 7

- **ID:** `python/pandas-parsererror-tokenizing`
- **Domain:** python
- **Category:** data_error
- **Verification:** ai_generated
- **Fix Rate:** 80%

## Root Cause

A CSV row contains more delimiters than the header row, usually due to unescaped commas inside a quoted field or an extra column introduced mid-file.

## Version Compatibility

| Version | Status | Introduced | Deprecated |
|---------|--------|------------|------------|
| 3.x | active | — | — |

## Workarounds

1. **** (90% success)
   ```
   pd.read_csv(path, on_bad_lines='skip')  # or 'warn'
   ```
2. **** (85% success)
   ```
   pd.read_csv(path, sep=';', quoting=csv.QUOTE_ALL) after inspecting line 42
   ```

## Dead Ends

- **** — Removed in pandas 2.0; raises TypeError (90% fail)
- **** — Slower but still raises ParserError on bad rows (70% fail)