Debug issues with preprocessor parsing pod settings file

[wrongkindofdoctor]

Description Include a summary of the change, and link the associated issue (if applicable).
List any dependencies that are required for this change, including libraries and variables,
and their metadata (units, frequencies, etc...). Be sure to separate PRs and issues for new PODs and PODs currently under development.

Associated issue #681

How Has This Been Tested? RHEL8 , Python 3.12, WWEs POD (incoming) Checklist:

• [ ] My branch is up-to-date with the NOAA-GFDL main branch, and all merge conflicts are resolved
• [ ] The scripts are written in Python 3.12 or above (preferred; required if funded by a CPO grant), NCL, or R
• [ ] All of my scripts are in the diagnostics/[POD short name] subdirectory, and include a main_driver script, template html, and settings.jsonc file
• [ ] I have made corresponding changes to the documentation in the POD's doc/ subdirectory
• [ ] I have requested that the framework developers add packages required by my POD to the python3, NCL, or R environment yaml file if necessary, and my environment builds with conda_env_setup.sh
• [ ] I have added any necessary data to input_data/obs_data/[pod short name] and/or input_data/model/[pod short name]
• [ ] My code is portable; it uses MDTF environment variables, and does not contain hard-coded file or directory paths
• [ ] I have provided the code to generate digested data files from raw data files
• [ ] Each digested data file generated by the script contains numerical data (no figures), and is 3 GB or less in size
• [ ] I have included copies of the figures generated by the POD in the pull request
• [ ] The repository contains no extra test scripts or data files