prestodb/presto · error · IllegalArgumentException

columns is empty

Error message

columns is empty

What it means

DiscretePredicates represents per-split tuple-domain predicates over a set of columns. The constructor requires a non-empty column list because predicates are keyed by columns; an empty column list is rejected with this IllegalArgumentException.

Source

Thrown at presto-spi/src/main/java/com/facebook/presto/spi/DiscretePredicates.java:33

import com.facebook.presto.common.predicate.TupleDomain;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import static java.util.Collections.unmodifiableList;
import static java.util.Objects.requireNonNull;

public final class DiscretePredicates
{
    private final List<ColumnHandle> columns;
    private final Iterable<TupleDomain<ColumnHandle>> predicates;

    public DiscretePredicates(List<ColumnHandle> columns, Iterable<TupleDomain<ColumnHandle>> predicates)
    {
        requireNonNull(columns, "columns is null");
        if (columns.isEmpty()) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("columns is empty");
        }
        this.columns = unmodifiableList(new ArrayList<>(columns));
        // do not copy predicates because it may be lazy
        this.predicates = requireNonNull(predicates, "predicates is null");
    }

    public List<ColumnHandle> getColumns()
    {
        return columns;
    }

    public Iterable<TupleDomain<ColumnHandle>> getPredicates()
    {
        return predicates;
    }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 55bb57d202)

Solutions

1. Ensure the columns list contains at least one ColumnHandle before constructing
2. When no columns exist, pass TupleDomain.all() for the split instead of DiscretePredicates
3. Fix the column-set computation that produced an empty list

Example fix

// before
new DiscretePredicates(ImmutableList.of(), predicates);
// after
if (!columns.isEmpty()) {
    new DiscretePredicates(columns, predicates);
}

if (columns == null || columns.isEmpty()) { return null; // or use TupleDomain.all() instead of DiscretePredicates }

try { new DiscretePredicates(columns, predicates); } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) { return null; // degrade to no discrete predicates }

When it happens

Trigger: Constructing new DiscretePredicates(Collections.emptyList(), predicates) or passing a column list that ended up empty after filtering.

Common situations: Connector metadata code building discrete predicates from dynamically computed column sets that turn out empty; passing predicates with no projected columns when the table has no predicate-relevant columns.

Related errors

• catalogName is empty
• NOT_SUPPORTED
• id is empty
• Timeout is negative
• INVALID_FUNCTION_ARGUMENT

AI-assisted analysis of prestodb/presto@55bb57d202 (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/db1304bfe9a24809. Report an issue: GitHub.