Tor has been giving a consistent parse error for a few months now. I genuinely could not find any weird characters in my /etc/tor/torrc file, I got the aforementioned parse error using the config file that comes out of the box, got it with an empty file and finally tried removing the file altogether. After removing the file I still got the same error (included below). If anybody has any idea what might be going wrong then your input is appreciated.
# tor
May 14 18:17:48.200 [notice] Tor 0.3.5.8 running on Linux with Libevent 2.1.8-stable, OpenSSL 1.0.2r, Zlib 1.2.11, Liblzma N/A, and Libzstd N/A.
May 14 18:17:48.200 [notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://www.torproject.org/download/download#warning
May 14 18:17:48.200 [notice] Configuration file "/etc/tor/torrc" not present, using reasonable defaults.
May 14 18:17:48.203 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050
May 14 18:17:48.203 [notice] Opened Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050
May 14 18:17:48.000 [warn] Error while parsing configuration: Excess data after quoted string
May 14 18:17:48.000 [err] set_options(): Bug: Acting on config options left us in a broken state. Dying. (on Tor 0.3.5.8 )
May 14 18:17:48.000 [err] Reading config failed--see warnings above.