Corrupt .craft file

[NGTOne]

So I've run into this issue before, and I've read that it's got something to do with messed up struts/fuel lines. Problem is, this ship is a massive, complex beastie and I really, really, really don't want to have to delete all the struts/fuel lines and re-place them, because it'll take forever and probably end up making the ship (and my computer) go ker-boom in the process

For the curious, here's the error in the VAB:

ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Argument is out of range.

Parameter name: index

at System.Collections.Generic.List`1[Part].get_Item (Int32 index) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at ShipConstruct.get_Item (Int32 index) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at plugintutorial1.VABScaleDetector.OnStart (StartState state) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at Part.ModulesOnStart () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at Part+.MoveNext () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

Basically, the craft file has become corrupt, and just complains about index-out-of-bounds in the VAB (and NullReferenceExceptions when I try to launch it).

EDIT: Wrote a perl script to find surface-attached that don't actually exist (which was the problem; see below).

Edited May 27, 2015 by NGTOne

[NGTOne]

Fixed this problem using a Perl script I wrote (available below) and some manual editing with Notepad++.

https://gist.github.com/NGTOne/9d8148b4de0a2e52170f

Output from the script when run against the posted craft file:

Unlinked part found at line 149438

Unlinked part found at line 149439

The issue was a pair of "link=..." entries for struts that didn't actually exist.

Edited May 27, 2015 by NGTOne