Fix MeCab Config File Path | Generated by AI
Your error
RuntimeError: param.cpp(70) [ifs] no such file or directory: /usr/local/etc/mecabrc
means MeCab can’t find its configuration file (mecabrc).
On macOS, if you installed MeCab via Homebrew recently, it’s likely installed under /opt/homebrew/ instead of /usr/local/, but the Python binding is still looking for the old /usr/local/etc/mecabrc path.
Here’s how you can fix it:
1. Find where mecabrc actually is
Run:
brew list mecab
or:
find /opt/homebrew -name mecabrc
You’ll probably see something like:
/opt/homebrew/etc/mecabrc
2. Point MeCab to the correct mecabrc
You can specify the path in your Python code:
import MeCab
t = MeCab.Tagger(f"-r /opt/homebrew/etc/mecabrc -d /opt/homebrew/lib/mecab/dic/ipadic")
print(t.parse("すもももももももものうち"))
3. Or set an environment variable
export MECABRC=/opt/homebrew/etc/mecabrc
Then run your script normally:
python try_mecab.py
4. If you want to make /usr/local/etc/mecabrc work
You can also symlink it:
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/etc
sudo ln -s /opt/homebrew/etc/mecabrc /usr/local/etc/mecabrc
But the environment variable approach is cleaner.
If you want, I can also give you a Homebrew reinstall + ipadic setup command so it works without specifying -r every time. That way your try_mecab.py stays clean.