Catch Mathematica warnings/errors without displaying them - warnings

I have a problem involving NDSolve in Mathematica, which I run multiple times with different values of the parameters. For some of these values, the solution results in singularities and NDSolve warns with NDSolve::ndsz or other related warnings.
I would simply like to catch these warnings, suppress their display, and just keep track of the fact that a problem occurred for these particular values of the parameters. I thought of the following options (neither of which really do the trick):
I know I can determine whether a command has resulted in a warning or error by using Check. However, that will still display the warning. If I turn it off with Off the Check fails to report the warning too.
It is possible to stop NDSolve using the EventLocator method, so I could check for very large values of the function or its derivatives and stop evaluation in that case. However, in practice, this still produces warnings from time to time, presumably because the step size can sometimes be so large that the NDSolve warning triggers before my Event has taken place.
Any other suggestions?

If you wrap the Check with Quiet then I believe that everything should work as you want. For example, you can suppress the specific message Power::indet
In[1]:= Quiet[Check[0^0,err,Power::indet],Power::indet]
Out[1]= err
but other messages are still displayed
In[2]:= Quiet[Check[Sin[x,y],err,Power::indet],Power::indet]
During evaluation of In[2]:= Sin::argx: Sin called with 2 arguments; 1 argument is expected. >>
Out[2]= Sin[x,y]

Using Quiet and Check together works:
Quiet[Check[Table[1/Sin[x], {x, 0, \[Pi], \[Pi]}], $Failed]]

Perhaps you wish to redirect messages? This is copied almost verbatim from that page.
stream = OpenWrite["msgtemp.txt"];
$Messages = {stream};
1/0
FilePrint["msgtemp.txt"]

Related

Shows warning during compiling

enter image description here
it show warning
I was suppose to arrange the numbers, In order irrespective of the values, but to move 0 come at last.
To learn what you are doing wrong you need to read a book in C. Basic one.
I can point some errors and good practices.
comparison is done by ==. so you should use if(i==0)
After the second for loop you would want to change the value of i to 0. i=0.
the two for loops should be run upto the point when i<n and j<n.
That if(a[i]==0) comparison is not needed.
You don't need the while loop here.
You can print all of them after the for-for looping.
Global variables are used but you should have a good reason to use that.
Index variables are better if declared and defined locally.
what you are trying to do is known as Bubble sort.
Even after understanding all this and following this you get error try to run it through debugger, try small value of n.
Then if you can't, then ask here.

MediaWiki not returning continue parameter

I'm using this API request:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=geosearch&gsradius=10000&gscoord=51.540951897949|-0.051086739997922&format=json&gslimit=50&continue=
which delivers 50 results. I want to use the 'continue' parameter to get the next page of results. According to the documentation I should get a continue field back in the results. I don't get any such result so can't get the next page.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Dave, as #svick says, it seems list=geosearch (which is part of extension:GeoData) does not support continuation; indeed, it actually returns a "batchcomplete" element to indicate no more results (see in human-readable form).
I think you should either just get the maximum number of results (500 for users, 5000 for bots on Wikipedia), or if that's not satisfactory for your use case (which is?), pipe in at task T78703.
(Or, if you believe it to be a separate issue, report a new bug.

Using warning ('on', 'Octave:matlab-incompatible')

I recently found out that you can get Octave to warn when you are using features not compatible with Matlab. Due to working with others this feature is appealing.
warning ('on', 'Octave:matlab-incompatible')
However when I use it in even simple scripts
warning ('on', 'Octave:matlab-incompatible');
x = 5;
plot(x);
I get many warning due to the implementation of plot using non-Matlab compatible features. For example
warning: potential Matlab compatibility problem: ! used as operator near line 215 offile /usr/share/octave/3.8.1/m/plot/draw/plot.m
Is there a way to turn off these warnings? I don't care if plot is implemented using non-Matlab features because when I use Matlab its implementation will be fine.
No that is not possible which makes the Octave:matlab-incompatible almost useless. Also, that warning is only printed for syntax so you can still use Octave only functions (such as center or sumsq) without any problem.
I recommend you use a text editor that has separate Matlab and Octave syntax highlight (such as gedit) and avoid things that don't get highlighted.
Here's how it's done in Matlab, which looks to be similar to the Octave case:
warning('on', 'Octave:matlab-incompatible'); % Your Octave warning
x = 5;
WarnState = warning('off', 'Offending_MSGID'); % You'll need to get the specific ID
plot(x);
warning(WarnState); % Restore
Yes, it's a bit clumsy. There's no way to specify that a warning is not enabled within a particular file that I know of.
One thing that can happen is that the code an be interrupted by the user or an error before the warning state is restored. In this case, Your system now is in an unknown warning state. One way to avoid this is to use onCleanup. This function is called when a function exits, even if it exits due to an error. You might rewrite the above as:
warning('on', 'Octave:matlab-incompatible'); % Your Octave warning
x = 5;
WarnState = warning('off', 'Offending_MSGID'); % You'll need to get the specific ID
C = onCleanup(#()warning(WarnState));
plot(x);
...
Note that onCleanup won't be called until the function exits so the warning state won't be restored until then. You should be able to add a warning(WarnState); line to manually restore before if you want. Just be sure that whatever function onCleanup is calling can never return an error itself.

assert() vs enforce(): Which to choose?

I'm having a hard time choosing whether I should "enforce" a condition or "assert" a condition in D. (This is language-neutral, though.)
Theoretically, I know that you use assertions to find bugs, and you enforce other conditions in order to check for atypical conditions. E.g. you might say assert(count >= 0) for an argument to your method, because that indicates that there's a bug with the caller, and that you would say enforce(isNetworkConnected), because that's not a bug, it's just something that you're assuming that could very well not be true in a legitimate situation beyond your control.
Furthermore, assertions can be removed from code as an optimization, with no side effects, but enforcements cannot be removed because they must always execute their condition code. Hence if I'm implementing a lazy-filled container that fills itself on the first access to any of its methods, I say enforce(!empty()) instead of assert(!empty()), because the check for empty() must always occur, since it lazily executes code inside.
So I think I know that they're supposed to mean. But theory is easier than practice, and I'm having a hard time actually applying the concepts.
Consider the following:
I'm making a range (similar to an iterator) that iterates over two other ranges, and adds the results. (For functional programmers: I'm aware that I can use map!("a + b") instead, but I'm ignoring that for now, since it doesn't illustrate the question.) So I have code that looks like this in pseudocode:
void add(Range range1, Range range2)
{
Range result;
while (!range1.empty)
{
assert(!range2.empty); //Should this be an assertion or enforcement?
result += range1.front + range2.front;
range1.popFront();
range2.popFront();
}
}
Should that be an assertion or an enforcement? (Is it the caller's fault that the ranges don't empty at the same time? It might not have control of where the range came from -- it could've come from a user -- but then again, it still looks like a bug, doesn't it?)
Or here's another pseudocode example:
uint getFileSize(string path)
{
HANDLE hFile = CreateFile(path, ...);
assert(hFile != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE); //Assertion or enforcement?
return GetFileSize(hFile); //and close the handle, obviously
}
...
Should this be an assertion or an enforcement? The path might come from a user -- so it might not be a bug -- but it's still a precondition of this method that the path should be valid. Do I assert or enforce?
Thanks!
I'm not sure it is entirely language-neutral. No language that I use has enforce(), and if I encountered one that did then I would want to use assert and enforce in the ways they were intended, which might be idiomatic to that language.
For instance assert in C or C++ stops the program when it fails, it doesn't throw an exception, so its usage may not be the same as what you're talking about. You don't use assert in C++ unless you think that either the caller has already made an error so grave that they can't be relied on to clean up (e.g. passing in a negative count), or else some other code elsewhere has made an error so grave that the program should be considered to be in an undefined state (e.g. your data structure appears corrupt). C++ does distinguish between runtime errors and logic errors, though, which may roughly correspond but I think are mostly about avoidable vs. unavoidable errors.
In the case of add you'd use a logic error if the author's intent is that a program which provides mismatched lists has bugs and needs fixing, or a runtime exception if it's just one of those things that might happen. For instance if your function were to handle arbitrary generators, that don't necessarily have a means of reporting their length short of destructively evaluating the whole sequence, you'd be more likely consider it an unavoidable error condition.
Calling it a logic error implies that it's the caller's responsibility to check the length before calling add, if they can't ensure it by the exercise of pure reason. So they would not be passing in a list from a user without explicitly checking the length first, and in all honesty should count themselves lucky they even got an exception rather than undefined behavior.
Calling it a runtime error expresses that it's "reasonable" (if abnormal) to pass in lists of different lengths, with the exception indicating that it happened on this occasion. Hence I think an enforcement rather than an assertion.
In the case of filesize: for the existence of a file, you should if possible treat that as a potentially recoverable failure (enforcement), not a bug (assertion). The reason is simply that there is no way for the caller to be certain that a file exists - there's always someone with more privileges who can come along and remove it, or unmount the entire fielsystem, in between a check for existence and a call to filesize. It's therefore not necessarily a logical flaw in the calling code when it doesn't exist (although the end-user might have shot themselves in the foot). Because of that fact it's likely there will be callers who can treat it as just one of those things that happens, an unavoidable error condition. Creating a file handle could also fail for out-of-memory, which is another unavoidable error on most systems, although not necessarily a recoverable one if for example over-committing is enabled.
Another example to consider is operator[] vs. at() for C++'s vector. at() throws out_of_range, a logic error, not because it's inconceivable that a caller might want to recover, or because you have to be some kind of numbskull to make the mistake of accessing an array out of range using at(), but because the error is entirely avoidable if the caller wants it to be - you can always check the size() before access if you have no other way of knowing whether your index is good or not. And so operator[] doesn't guarantee any checks at all, and in the name of efficiency an out of range access has undefined behavior.
assert should be considered a "run-time checked comment" indicating an assumption that the programmer makes at that moment. The assert is part of the function implementation. A failed assert should always be considered a bug at the point where the wrong assumption is made, so at the code location of the assert. To fix the bug, use a proper means to avoid the situation.
The proper means to avoid bad function inputs are contracts, so the example function should have a input contract that checks that range2 is at least as long as range1. The assertion inside the implementation could then still remain in place. Especially in longer more complex implementations, such an assert may inprove understandability.
An enforce is a lazy approach to throwing runtime exceptions. It is nice for quick-and-dirty code because it is better to have a check in there rather then silently ignoring the possibility of a bad condition. For production code, it should be replaced by a proper mechanism that throws a more meaningful exception.
I believe you have partly answered your question yourself. Assertions are bound to break the flow. If your assertion is wrong, you will not agree to continue with anything. If you enforce something you are making a decision to allow something to happen based on the situation. If you find that the conditions are not met, you can enforce that the entry to a particular section is denied.

Should functions that only output return anything?

I'm rewriting a series of PHP functions to a container class. Many of these functions do a bit of processing, but in the end, just echo content to STDOUT.
My question is: should I have a return value within these functions? Is there a "best practice" as far as this is concerned?
In systems that report errors primarily through exceptions, don't return a return value if there isn't a natural one.
In systems that use return values to indicate errors, it's useful to have all functions return the error code. That way, a user can simply assume that every single function returns an error code and develop a pattern to check them that they follow everywhere. Even if the function can never fail right now, return a success code. That way if a future change makes it possible to have an error, users will already be checking errors instead of implicitly silently ignoring them (and getting really confused why the system is behaving oddly).
Can the processing fail? If so, should the caller know about that? If either of these is no, then I don't see value in a return. However, if the processing can fail, and that can make a difference to the caller, then I'd suggest returning a status or error code.
Do not return a value if there is no value to return. If you have some value you need to convey to the caller, then return it but that doesn't sound like the case in this instance.
I will often "return: true;" in these cases, as it provides a way to check that the function worked. Not sure about best practice though.
Note that in C/C++, the output functions (including printf()) return the number of bytes written, or -1 if this fails. It may be worth investigating this further to see why it's been done like this. I confess that
I'm not sure that writing to stdout could practically fail (unless you actively close your STDOUT stream)
I've never seen anyone collect this value, let alone do anything with it.
Note that this is distinct from writing to file streams - I'm not counting stream redirection in the shell.
To do the "correct" thing, if the point of the method is only to print the data, then it shouldn't return anything.
In practice, I often find that having such functions return the text that they've just printed can often be useful (sometimes you also want to send an error message via email or feed it to some other function).
In the end, the choice is yours. I'd say it depends on how much of a "purist" you are about such things.
You should just:
return;
In my opinion the SRP (single responsibility principle) is applicable for methods/functions as well, and not only for objects. One method should do one thing, if it outputs data it shouldn't do any data processing - if it doesn't do processing it shouldn't return data.
There is no need to return anything, or indeed to have a return statement. It's effectively a void function, and it's comprehensible enough that these have no return value. Putting in a 'return;' solely to have a return statement is noise for the sake of pedantry.