Hive metastore complains about illegal character in path while creating table whereas the path doesnt exist

[#1]

Hi,

Whenever I am trying to create any external table with any path, the error comes up

FAILED: Execution Error, return code 1 from org.apache.hadoop.hive.ql.exec.DDLTask. MetaException(message:Illegal character in path at index 17: hdfs://namenode1/ apps/sysDSPPRS)

Don't know from where it is taking the space between "namenode1/" and "apps".

DDL: 

hive> CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE mydb.ext_apps (a string, b string) LOCATION 'hdfs://namenode1/apps/sysDSPPRS/sysuser/ext_apps';

There is no path in HDFS as "hdfs://namenode1/ apps", but "hdfs://namenode1/apps" does exist

[sysuser@server dev]$ hadoop fs -ls /
Found 5 items
drwxrwxrwx   - hdfs  supergroup          0 2022-03-04 09:15 /apps
drwx--x--x   - hbase hbase               0 2022-02-02 17:33 /hbase
drwxr-xr-x   - hdfs  supergroup          0 2020-09-18 12:57 /system
drwxrwxrwt   - hdfs  supergroup          0 2022-03-11 07:29 /tmp
drwxr-xr-x   - hdfs  supergroup          0 2022-03-08 08:05 /user

We are using CDH version "Hadoop 3.0.0-cdh6.3.4"

[#2]

Please review the fs.defaultFS configuration in the core-site.xml file within the Hive process directory and ensure that it does not contain any leading or trailing spaces.