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Re: spurious $Aborted messages. How to track down cause?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg79738] Re: spurious $Aborted messages. How to track down cause?
• From: Nasser Abbasi <nma at 12000.org>
• Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 06:25:34 -0400 (EDT)
• References: <f8cgnd$44d$1@smc.vnet.net>

I am still seeing the $Aborted message pop up once in a while, even
though I made the TimeConstrained time very large for Manipulate to be
happy.

But the reason I am writing now is to ask a more basic question: Why
it seems so hard for Mathematica to be able to provide more useful
error messages for the user about where something went wrong when it
does?  What is so hard to display the reason for the $Aborted message
in this case, and where it aborted, which function, or God forbid,
even give the user a line number?  Just saying $Aborted is not too
useful.

The same for the normal error messages, why no line number to tell the
user where the error is?

I spend 90% of my time in Mathematica trying to find the location of
the error that caused the error message, because Mathematica simply
tells the user what the error is, NOT where it is as well.

Is the concept of a line number in the code or even a stack printout
to show the call history to help the user find the cause of the error
something that conflicts with the design of Mathematica?

If a user has 100,000 lines program, and then they get an error
message saying: "You tried to access an array outside of its
boundaries", but not where, how helpful is this message to the user?

Mathematica needs a feature to have line numbers displayed in the
notebook, with on/off switch, and error messages that gives the line
number as well with the message. So when an error happen, the user can
see the exact location of the error.

Nasser

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Re: spurious $Aborted messages. How to track down cause?
    • From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz@mimuw.edu.pl>