Re: [Reduce-algebra-developers] error reporting

[Arthur N. <ac...@ca...>]

No there is no switch to flip between the fuller error message and a 
short-form one, and no mechanism to print potentially big expressions with 
a "..." after the first bit of them. Your question is a sort of almost 
inevitable consequence of the previous poster's queries in terms of 
seeking more and more refined diagnostics!

Of course ALL the code for Reduce is there and so *ANYBODY* who wants can 
inspect it and in particular track down just where the error messages are 
generated. They could then propose changes: they could without any 
question make whatever changes they wanted in their own local copy of the 
code and if they could make a case that what they were doing was thorough 
and generally beneficial and would not upset others whose work patterns 
differed then what they had would be a candidate for inclusion in the main 
source tree.

Predicting how much detail will suit other people in a diagnostic is 
something I find hard and I probably even expect that the same test code 
and the same individual will have different desires on different days, and 
that few people will remember the details of a new function or switch that 
controls stuff... but if you can work out a plausible idea please do and 
get it back to us all...
   Arthur



On Mon, 22 Dec 2014, Jarmo Hietarinta wrote:

>> I observe that I can generate a diagnostic as follows
>> 
>> 1: deg (sin x/cos y, x);
>>
>>       sin(x)
>> ***** -------- invalid as polynomial
>>        cos(y)
>>
>> so you can track through and see the (symbolic mode) code for the function
>> typerr that arranges to be able to embed an algebraic expression within a
>> message that gets sent back to the user.
>
> When I deal with very large expressions I do not want error report to be of type
>
> **** ((hundreds of lines of expression )) is not a polynomial,
>
> I would rather prefer a more laconic form, such as
>
> **** expression given to factorize is not a polynomial
>
> Can one control the output of error reporting by a switch?
>
> Jarmo Hietarinta