taichi-dev/taichi

Exception raising in Field APIs

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#2,846 opened on Aug 30, 2021

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feature requestgood first issuewelcome contribution

Description

The current Field APIs, including ScalarField, MatrixField, and Structfield (after #2627) use assertions statements to check input validity, for example,

https://github.com/taichi-dev/taichi/blob/03e2923d103704048c101051d337fa31f9dbb1de/python/taichi/lang/matrix.py#L207

In software engineering practice, assertion is used to verify whether the program itself is implemented correctly regardless of user inputs, while exceptions/errors are used to check validity of the inputs. Therefore quite a few occurrences of assert statements in field.py and matrix.py are supposed to raise errors.

Contributions are greatly welcomed!

Contributor guide

Tech stack
python
Domain
developer experience
Issue type
refactor
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
2
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
blocked
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Basic Python
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
80
Research direction
Replace assert statements in field.py and matrix.py with appropriate exception raising (e.g., ValueError). Refer to the linked lines in matrix.py#L207 and similar patterns in field.py. Ensure to maintain consistent error messages. See PR #2627 for related struct field changes.