Skip to content

Errors and limits#

What to_spec checks#

to_spec attaches no data. Before it returns a Spec, it parses the file, resolves every name, checks every dimension rule and every degree, and reads every where string and every macro template, including the templates that nothing calls. A piecewise: block is checked against every rule its expansion would be held to. Anything the language refuses is refused there.

Every message names what went wrong and what to do about it:

Constraint 'balance', equation 0: 'p_charge' not found.
  Variables: ['dispatch', 'soc']
  Parameters: ['capacity', 'load', 'efficiency']
Check for typos, or ensure 'p_charge' is declared.

What advice warns about#

ms.advice(spec) returns a tuple of ms.Advice, one per warning, and python -m mathspec check spec.yaml prints them. Advice is a warning: the file loads.

kind The file has… The advice says…
never-an-axis a dimension nothing is indexed by, nothing aggregates into and no relation targets remove it, or keep it knowingly if its declarations are still to come
unbounded a variable that no constraint, set or curve uses, whose objective term pushes it towards a bound it does not have give it a finite bound, or the constraint that was meant to define it 
Variable 'slack' makes this spec unbounded: no constraint names it, and
bounds.lower is open, which is the direction a +slack term improves a minimize
objective in. No data can change that, so the solve would answer `unbounded`
and name nothing.
Give it a finite bounds.lower, or the constraint that was meant to define it.

advice is silent where the answer depends on the data: an objective coefficient that is a parameter, or a where: that leaves one slice of a variable with no constraint row.

Which error you get#

Class Subclass of
MathSpecError ValueError The root
LanguageError MathSpecError Something in the spec: a construct outside the language, a dimension set that does not compose, or a name that nothing declares
SchemaError LanguageError Something in the file: an unknown key, a malformed declaration, or a bad symbol table
DimensionError LanguageError Dimensions that disagree, such as a constraint whose expression does not equal its dims

Every one of these is reproducible from the YAML alone.

What the language will not express#

What the language refuses, and what to write instead, is in the limits.