stanfordnlp/CoreNLP · error · RuntimeException

File problem

Error message

File problem: <e>

What it means

QPTreeTransformer.main loads trees from files given on the command line using PennTreeReader; any IOException while opening or reading those files is wrapped in this bare RuntimeException("File problem: " + e), typically meaning the named tree file does not exist or cannot be read.

Solutions

1. Verify the file path passed on the command line exists and is readable (ls -l <path>), fixing the path or running from the correct directory.
2. Use absolute paths or paths relative to the actual working directory when invoking the tool.
3. Check file permissions; chmod/read-access the tree file if needed.
4. Catch the RuntimeException in a wrapper script and validate files exist before invoking the tool.

Example fix

// before
java edu.stanford.nlp.trees.QPTreeTransformer wsj/0001/wsj_0101.mrg  // wrong cwd
// after
java edu.stanford.nlp.trees.QPTreeTransformer "/data/ptb/wsj/00/wsj_0101.mrg"  // verified existing absolute path

List<String> files = Arrays.asList(treeFileNames);
for (String name : files) {
  File f = new File(name);
  if (!f.isFile() || !f.canRead())
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Tree file not readable: " + f.getAbsolutePath());
}

try {
  QPTreeTransformer.main(args);
} catch (RuntimeException e) {
  if (e.getMessage() != null && e.getMessage().startsWith("File problem:")) {
    log.error("Bad tree file argument: " + e.getMessage());
  } else throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running QPTreeTransformer.main with a treeFileName argument that points to a nonexistent file, a directory, or a file without read permission, so new FileInputStream(...) throws FileNotFoundException/IOException.

Common situations: Typos in the path on the command line; running from a different working directory than expected; files moved after a corpus reorganization; missing read permissions.

Understand the failure class

Background: "File not found" and ENOENT errors: why libraries can't find a file that should exist — this error's family across 50 libraries.

Related errors

• Cannot find or open + sentFileName
• e
• Error creating ChineseMaxentLexicon
• Could not read from double initial LOP weights file
• Couldn't read RegexNER from " + mapping

AI-assisted analysis of stanfordnlp/CoreNLP@1b7edd19c4 (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b89be1aff311f468. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/edu/stanford/nlp/trees/QPTreeTransformer.java:168

  }


  public static void main(String[] args) {

    QPTreeTransformer transformer = new QPTreeTransformer();
    Treebank tb = new MemoryTreebank();
    Properties props = StringUtils.argsToProperties(args);
    String treeFileName = props.getProperty("treeFile");

    if (treeFileName != null) {
      try {
        TreeReader tr = new PennTreeReader(new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(treeFileName))), new LabeledScoredTreeFactory());
        Tree t;
        while ((t = tr.readTree()) != null) {
          tb.add(t);
        }
      } catch (IOException e) {
        throw new RuntimeException("File problem: " + e);
      }

    }

    for (Tree t : tb) {
      System.out.println("Original tree");
      t.pennPrint();
      System.out.println();
      System.out.println("Tree transformed");
      Tree tree = transformer.transformTree(t);
      tree.pennPrint();
      System.out.println();
      System.out.println("----------------------------");
    }
  }

}

View on GitHub (pinned to 1b7edd19c4)