stanfordnlp/CoreNLP · error · IllegalArgumentException

Constructor argument not valid list of number ranges (too…

Error message

Constructor argument not valid list of number ranges (too many hyphens): 

What it means

NumberRangesFileFilter parses a comma-separated string of number ranges like "1-5,20,100-200". Each comma-separated token may contain at most one hyphen; a token with more than one hyphen cannot be a valid range, so the constructor throws this IllegalArgumentException. The message notably omits the offending input string.

Solutions

1. Remove the extra hyphen so each token is either "N" or "N-M" with non-negative integers
2. If negative bounds are needed, preprocess the string yourself and pass absolute values or a custom filter
3. Validate the ranges string with a regex like \\d+(-\\d+)?(,\\d+(-\\d+)?)* before constructing

Example fix

// before
new NumberRangesFileFilter("1-2-5", false);
// after
new NumberRangesFileFilter("1-5", false);

if (!ranges.matches("\\d+(-\\d+)?(,\\s*\\d+(-\\d+)?)*")) throw new IllegalArgumentException("Bad ranges: " + ranges);

try { f = new NumberRangesFileFilter(ranges, recurse); } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) { if (e.getMessage().contains("too many hyphens")) { /* fix ranges string */ } else throw e; }

When it happens

Trigger: new NumberRangesFileFilter("1-2-3", false) or any ranges string where a comma-separated token splits on '-' into more than 2 pieces (e.g. negative-number-looking tokens like "-1-5").

Common situations: Negative range endpoints ("-10--1"), typos with extra hyphens, filenames/config values built by string concatenation that leaked an extra '-'.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

• Array lengths don't match
• Cannot parse Trilean from string: " + value
• Constructor argument not valid list of number ranges
• Too few columns: / (offset: )
• Too many columns: / (offset: )

AI-assisted analysis of stanfordnlp/CoreNLP@1b7edd19c4 (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d477820809414fb4. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/edu/stanford/nlp/io/NumberRangesFileFilter.java:61

  /**
   * Sets up a NumberRangesFileFilter by specifying the ranges of numbers
   * to accept, and whether to also traverse
   * folders for recursive search.
   *
   * @param ranges  The ranges of numbers to accept (see class documentation)
   * @param recurse Whether to go into subfolders
   * @throws IllegalArgumentException If the String ranges does not
   *                                  contain a suitable ranges format
   */
  public NumberRangesFileFilter(String ranges, boolean recurse) {
    recursively = recurse;
    try {
      String[] ra = ranges.split(",");
      for (String range : ra) {
        String[] one = range.split("-");
        if (one.length > 2) {
          throw new IllegalArgumentException("Constructor argument not valid list of number ranges (too many hyphens): ");
        } else {
          int low = Integer.parseInt(one[0].trim());
          int high;
          if (one.length == 2) {
            high = Integer.parseInt(one[1].trim());
          } else {
            high = low;
          }
          Pair<Integer, Integer> p = new Pair<>(Integer.valueOf(low), Integer.valueOf(high));
          this.ranges.add(p);
        }
      }
    } catch (Exception e) {
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("Constructor argument not valid list of number ranges: " + ranges, e);
    }
  }

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