AWS EMR: Error parsing parameter: Expected: '=', received: 'EOF' for input:

The reason this was failing was because AWS has strict rules when it comes to providing the path for reading files within your EC2 instance.

So, if you want to read the file instance-groups.json (assuming it is in the same directory from where you're running the aws emr CLI command), you must provide file://instance-groups.json as the filename, instead of the straightforward instance-groups.json.

Got this same error message for importing a JSON file in AWS DynamoDB, I was trying to import it from an S3 bucket.

Error parsing parameter '--instance-groups': Expected: '=', received: 'EOF' for input: instance-groups.json

The issues got fixed when I moved file locally and executed the command with file://

So thanks