What causes "No maximum number of iterations has been specified." in stanfordnlp/CoreNLP?

Call setMaxIterations(n) with n > 0 before minimize()

stanfordnlp/CoreNLP · error · java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException

No maximum number of iterations has been specified.

Error message

No maximum number of iterations has been specified.

What it means

StochasticMinimizer.minimize() throws this UnsupportedOperationException when both maxIterations and numPasses are non-positive, meaning no stopping criterion was configured. Stochastic optimizers in this library are pass/iteration-driven and refuse to start without a bound.

Solutions

Call setMaxIterations(n) with n > 0 before minimize()
Or call setNumPasses(n) to run n full passes over the data
Verify your options file/flag parsing sets the iteration fields

Example fix

// before
StochasticMinimizer m = new SGD();
m.minimize(f, 1e-4, initial);
// after
StochasticMinimizer m = new SGD();
m.setNumPasses(10);
m.minimize(f, 1e-4, initial);

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

StochasticMinimizer m = new SGD();
if (m.maxIterations <= 0 && m.numPasses <= 0) m.setNumPasses(10);

Try / catch

try { m.minimize(f, 1e-4, initial); } catch (UnsupportedOperationException e) { m.setNumPasses(10); m.minimize(f, 1e-4, initial); }

Prevention

Set numPasses for any StochasticMinimizer subclass before training
Validate optimizer settings in a config object before handing them to the optimizer
Never rely on defaults for stopping criteria in stochastic training

When it happens

Trigger: Subclassing or directly using StochasticMinimizer (e.g. SGD, InefficientStochasticMinimizer) and invoking minimize() without setMaxIterations(n) or setNumPasses(n).

Common situations: Building a trainer programmatically and forgetting the iteration setter; a refactored config pipeline dropping the iterations option; assuming the base class supplies a default.

Understand the failure class

Background: "is required", "must be set", "missing required field": configuration validation errors across open-source libraries — this error's family across 36 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of stanfordnlp/CoreNLP@1b7edd19c4 (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f0226828ddcfd4c8. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/edu/stanford/nlp/optimization/StochasticMinimizer.java:390

      ArrayMath.add(initial, gen.nextDouble() ); // to make sure that priors are working.
      sdft.testSumOfBatches(initial, 1e-4);
      System.exit(1);
    --- */

    x = initial;
    grad = new double[x.length];
    newX = new double[x.length];
    gradList = new ArrayList<>();
    numBatches =  dfunction.dataDimension()/ bSize;
    outputFrequency = (int) Math.ceil( ((double) numBatches) /( (double) outputFrequency) )  ;

    init(dfunction);
    initFiles();

    boolean have_max = (maxIterations > 0 || numPasses > 0);

    if (!have_max){
      throw new UnsupportedOperationException("No maximum number of iterations has been specified.");
    }else{
      maxIterations = Math.max(maxIterations, numPasses)*numBatches;
    }

    sayln("       Batchsize of: " + bSize);
    sayln("       Data dimension of: " + dfunction.dataDimension() );
    sayln("       Batches per pass through data:  " + numBatches );
    sayln("       Max iterations is = " + maxIterations);

    if (outputIterationsToFile) {
      infoFile.println(function.domainDimension() + "; DomainDimension " );
      infoFile.println(bSize + "; batchSize ");
      infoFile.println(maxIterations + "; maxIterations");
      infoFile.println(numBatches + "; numBatches ");
      infoFile.println(outputFrequency  + "; outputFrequency");
    }

    //!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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