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[WIP] Heuristic for better error messages - #9073

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Carreau wants to merge 6 commits into
ipython:masterfrom
Carreau:error-messages
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[WIP] Heuristic for better error messages#9073
Carreau wants to merge 6 commits into
ipython:masterfrom
Carreau:error-messages

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@Carreau

@Carreau Carreau commented Dec 16, 2015

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Proof of concept:

In [1]: from numpy import ones

In [2]: def stuff(**kwargs):
   ...:     return ones(**kwargs)
   ...:

In [3]: stuff(size=18)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TypeError                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-3-ee3c5cbdb6f2> in <module>()
----> 1 stuff(size=18)

<ipython-input-2-542e3f8f2f33> in stuff(**kwargs)
      1 def stuff(**kwargs):
----> 2     return ones(**kwargs)
      3

TypeError: ones() got an unexpected keyword argument 'size'. Did you meant one of 'shape' ?

See the did you mean at the end ?
English need to be better of course, and here the one of is extra as it finds only 1 match.

Anyway I think this would be tremendously useful for beginners to have a framework where before displaying a traceback we could spice it up with potential "fixes".

@Carreau

Carreau commented Dec 16, 2015

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Inspired by https://github.com/dutc/didyoumean, which is in C, and likely too intusive, and a recent tweet.

@Carreau

Carreau commented Dec 16, 2015

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Does not work (yet) is the function itself is not in the local or global namespace. eg:

def foo():
   np.ones()

@Carreau

Carreau commented Dec 17, 2015

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Now work also (a bit) when accessing an (wrong) attribute/methods of an object.
Should do smth similar

  • with dict KeyErrors,
  • Out of range access.
  • SyntaxError unexpected Token, (check for colon on line before)

@dsblank

dsblank commented Dec 17, 2015

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There is a lot of research on what makes good error messages. I would hate for this to proceed too far without anyone looking at that research.

@Carreau

Carreau commented Dec 17, 2015

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There is a lot of research on what makes good error messages. I would hate for this to proceed too far without anyone looking at that research.

I'm looking at what is doable. If you have any insight of regular user issues, and better error message that would be great.

For now I'm still focusing on technically how we could make these heuristics easy to write. We are definitively far from actually changing how things works in Python itself.

@takluyver takluyver modified the milestone: wishlist Jan 11, 2016
@Carreau Carreau closed this Mar 11, 2016
@Carreau
Carreau deleted the error-messages branch May 23, 2016 17:49
@minrk minrk modified the milestones: wishlist, no action May 31, 2016
@Carreau Carreau mentioned this pull request Aug 30, 2016
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@SylvainDe

SylvainDe commented Oct 5, 2016

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Hi,
I stumbled upon this PR via the following Twitter thread : https://twitter.com/cfbolz/status/783313503230844929 . A couple of years ago, I started working on some small project to have such suggestions that might interest you. There is still quite a lot of work to be done (to make it pip installable among other things) but everything can be found here : https://github.com/SylvainDe/DidYouMean-Python .
Any feedback is welcome.

@Carreau

Carreau commented Oct 5, 2016

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Sweet, that looks great ! I have to test that.

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5 participants

@Carreau @dsblank @SylvainDe @minrk @takluyver