From 33119c9bf73a6655f800168160ae6a9effa32472 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Vineeth Sai <vineethsai4444@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:55:11 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] fix: guard remove_special_tokens against tokenizers without a
 BOS token (#7048)

---
 .../test_remove_special_tokens_no_bos.py      | 46 +++++++++++++++++++
 unsloth/chat_templates.py                     |  5 +-
 2 files changed, 49 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 tests/python/test_remove_special_tokens_no_bos.py

diff --git a/tests/python/test_remove_special_tokens_no_bos.py b/tests/python/test_remove_special_tokens_no_bos.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..94c5ea3027
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/python/test_remove_special_tokens_no_bos.py
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+import ast
+from pathlib import Path
+
+
+def _load_remove_special_tokens():
+    # Extract remove_special_tokens without importing unsloth (importing unsloth
+    # needs unsloth_zoo / a GPU). The function is pure Python and uses no imports,
+    # so it execs cleanly in an empty namespace.
+    source = Path(__file__).parents[2] / "unsloth" / "chat_templates.py"
+    tree = ast.parse(source.read_text(encoding = "utf-8"))
+    funcs = [
+        node
+        for node in tree.body
+        if isinstance(node, ast.FunctionDef) and node.name == "remove_special_tokens"
+    ]
+    namespace = {}
+    module = ast.Module(body = funcs, type_ignores = [])
+    ast.fix_missing_locations(module)
+    exec(compile(module, str(source), "exec"), namespace)
+    return namespace["remove_special_tokens"]
+
+
+class _StubTokenizer:
+    def __init__(self, bos_token):
+        self.bos_token = bos_token
+
+
+def test_no_bos_tokenizer_does_not_crash():
+    # Tokenizers such as Qwen2 / Qwen2.5, GPT-2, Falcon and GPT-NeoX have no BOS
+    # token, so tokenizer.bos_token is None. remove_special_tokens must leave the
+    # prompt untouched instead of raising
+    # "TypeError: startswith first arg must be str or a tuple of str, not NoneType".
+    remove_special_tokens = _load_remove_special_tokens()
+    assert remove_special_tokens(_StubTokenizer(None), "Hello world") == "Hello world"
+
+
+def test_double_bos_is_stripped():
+    # A tokenizer with a BOS token still has a single leading BOS removed.
+    remove_special_tokens = _load_remove_special_tokens()
+    assert remove_special_tokens(_StubTokenizer("<s>"), "<s>Hello world") == "Hello world"
+
+
+def test_prompt_without_leading_bos_unchanged():
+    # A BOS-bearing tokenizer leaves a prompt that does not start with BOS alone.
+    remove_special_tokens = _load_remove_special_tokens()
+    assert remove_special_tokens(_StubTokenizer("<s>"), "Hello world") == "Hello world"
diff --git a/unsloth/chat_templates.py b/unsloth/chat_templates.py
index dd1e433471..2d3674fb04 100644
--- a/unsloth/chat_templates.py
+++ b/unsloth/chat_templates.py
@@ -2103,8 +2103,9 @@ def get_chat_template(
 
 def remove_special_tokens(tokenizer, prompt):
     # Removes double BOS token
-    if prompt.startswith(tokenizer.bos_token):
-        prompt = prompt[len(tokenizer.bos_token):]
+    bos_token = getattr(tokenizer, "bos_token", None)
+    if bos_token is not None and prompt.startswith(bos_token):
+        prompt = prompt[len(bos_token):]
     return prompt