Frequently Asked Questions
Herbie automatically transforms floating point expressions into more accurate forms. This page catalogs questions frequently asked questions about Herbie.
Several Herbie error messages refer to this page for additional information and debugging tips.
This error means you mis-formatted Herbie's input. Common errors
include misspelling function names and parenthesizing expressions
that must not be parenthesized. For example, in
(- (exp (x)) 1), (x) is incorrect:
x is a variable so isn't parenthesized. (- (exp
x) 1) would be the correct way of writing that expression.
Please review the input format
documentation for more.
Herbie uses random sampling to select the points which it will use
to evaluate the error of an expression. This error occurs when it
is not able to find enough valid points. For example, consider the
expression (acos (+ 1000 x)). This expression yields
a valid result only when x is between -1001 and -999,
a rather narrow range.
The solution is to help out Herbie by specifying a precondition.
Specify :pre (< -1001 x -999) for the example
above. Herbie will use the precondition to improve its sampling
strategy.
This error indicates that your precondition excludes all possible
inputs. For example, the precondition (< 3 x 2)
excludes all inputs. Herbie raises this exception only when it can
determine that no inputs work. The solution is to fix the
precondition to allow some inputs. Note that sufficiently complex
unsatisfiable preconditions instead raise the error above.
When using Chrome to view web pages on your local machine, Chrome
disables certain APIs for security reasons; this prevents the
Herbie reports from drawing the chart. Run Chrome
with --allow-file-access-from-files to fix this error.
We've not been able to reproduce these errors, but please report an issue.
Some users report errors with using Herbie threads.
Early versions of the web shell intermittently showed this error, which seems to be due to the Racket web server library.