diff --git a/tensor2tensor/utils/decoding.py b/tensor2tensor/utils/decoding.py
index 8aa3c0b71..706809180 100644
--- a/tensor2tensor/utils/decoding.py
+++ b/tensor2tensor/utils/decoding.py
@@ -512,7 +512,7 @@ def _get_sorted_inputs(filename, num_shards=1, delimiter="\n"):
   with tf.gfile.Open(decode_filename) as f:
     text = f.read()
     records = text.split(delimiter)
-    inputs = [record.strip() for record in records]
+    inputs = [record.strip() for record in records[:-1]]
   input_lens = [(i, len(line.split())) for i, line in enumerate(inputs)]
   sorted_input_lens = sorted(input_lens, key=operator.itemgetter(1))
   # We'll need the keys to rearrange the inputs back into their original order