clojure/clojure · error · IllegalArgumentException

Value out of range for short:

Error message

Value out of range for short: 

What it means

Clojure's RT.shortCast(Object) narrows any numeric value to a primitive short via longCast. If the value falls outside Short.MIN_VALUE (-32768)..Short.MAX_VALUE (32767), the cast is refused with IllegalArgumentException instead of silently truncating. It is thrown eagerly to preserve numeric fidelity when coercion (e.g. via (short x)) is requested.

Solutions

1. Range-check the value before casting: (when (<= Short/MIN_VALUE n Short/MAX_VALUE) (short n)).
2. Use a wider type (int/long) if the magnitude is inherent to the data.
3. Clamp or wrap explicitly with bit-and 0xFFFF if truncation is actually intended.
4. Fix upstream parsing/construction that produced an unexpectedly large value.

Example fix

// before
(short (:count m)) ; throws for 100000
// after
(let [n (long (:count m))]
  (if (<= Short/MIN_VALUE n Short/MAX_VALUE)
    (short n)
    (throw (ex-info "count exceeds short range" {:count n}))))

(defn short-safe? [x]
  (try (let [n (long x)] (<= Short/MIN_VALUE n Short/MAX_VALUE))
    (catch Exception _ false)))

(defn ->short [x]
  (when (short-safe? x) (short x)))

(try
  (short x)
  (catch IllegalArgumentException _
    (handle-out-of-range x)))

When it happens

Trigger: Calling (short x) / RT.shortCast(Object) with a Long, Integer, BigInt, BigInteger, Ratio or other Number whose longCast value is < -32768 or > 32767.

Common situations: Narrowing user-supplied or computed numbers into short fields (interop with Java APIs, byte-buffer packing, DB smallint columns); big results of arithmetic like (* 1000 1000) cast to short; parsing large numbers then coercing down.

Understand the failure class

Background: "value must be between 0 and 1" / "out of range" / "must not be negative" errors: fixing range-validation failures across open-source libraries — this error's family across 42 libraries.

Related errors

• Value out of range for float:
• Value out of range for int:
• Value out of range for long:
• AbortException
• Accessor/struct mismatch

AI-assisted analysis of clojure/clojure@f3b143341d (2026-09-09). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2a8ed3c0cc4ab96a. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/jvm/clojure/lang/RT.java:1168

static public byte byteCast(float x){
    if(x >= Byte.MIN_VALUE && x <= Byte.MAX_VALUE)
        return (byte) x;
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Value out of range for byte: " + x);
}

static public byte byteCast(double x){
    if(x >= Byte.MIN_VALUE && x <= Byte.MAX_VALUE)
        return (byte) x;
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Value out of range for byte: " + x);
}

static public short shortCast(Object x){
	if(x instanceof Short)
		return ((Short) x).shortValue();
	long n = longCast(x);
	if(n < Short.MIN_VALUE || n > Short.MAX_VALUE)
		throw new IllegalArgumentException("Value out of range for short: " + x);

	return (short) n;
}

static public short shortCast(byte x){
	return x;
}

static public short shortCast(short x){
	return x;
}

static public short shortCast(int x){
    short i = (short) x;
    if(i != x)
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Value out of range for short: " + x);
    return i;
}

View on GitHub (pinned to f3b143341d)