stanfordnlp/CoreNLP · error · RuntimeException

No test treebank path specified...

Error message

No test treebank path specified...

What it means

During testing in ChineseLexiconAndWordSegmenter.main, a test treebank path is required. When -testTreebank/-testPath was not given and no training treebank path exists to fall back on, main throws RuntimeException telling the user to specify a test treebank path. If a train path exists, it is reused with just a log message instead.

Solutions

1. Pass the test treebank path explicitly, e.g. -testTreebank /path/to/testTreebank or -testPath ...
2. Or include a -train option with a valid treebankPath so the code can default testPath to the train path
3. Verify the option spelling matches what main() parses

Example fix

// before
java ... -testFilter 0-100
// after
java ... -testTreebank /path/to/testTreebank -testFilter 0-100

boolean hasTestPath = argList.contains("-testPath") || argList.contains("-testTreebank"); boolean hasTrainPath = argList.contains("-train"); if (!hasTestPath && !hasTrainPath) throw new IllegalArgumentException("specify test treebank path");

try { main(args); } catch (RuntimeException e) { if (e.getMessage().startsWith("No test treebank path")) { args = add(args, "-testPath", defaultTestPath); main(args); } }

When it happens

Trigger: Running main() with a test filter configured but neither testPath nor treebankPath set — i.e., testing was requested without ever supplying a path to the test treebank and no train path is available.

Common situations: Running a test-only invocation (no -train) but forgetting -testTreebank path; misspelled path option so it was never parsed; scripting that builds arguments dynamically and drops the test path.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• Error: -train option must have treebankPath as first…
• Error: No dest file provided in properties or via command…
• Error: No training file provided in properties or via…
• Error: No training file provided in properties or via…
• -labels is required

AI-assisted analysis of stanfordnlp/CoreNLP@1b7edd19c4 (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/fee7d280f5ccdaa0. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/edu/stanford/nlp/parser/lexparser/ChineseLexiconAndWordSegmenter.java:572

        serializedInputFileOrUrl = args[argIndex];
        argIndex++;
      }
      try {
        cs = new ChineseLexiconAndWordSegmenter(serializedInputFileOrUrl, op);
      } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
        log.info("Error loading segmenter, exiting...");
        System.exit(0);
      }
    }

    // the following has to go after reading parser to make sure
    // op and tlpParams are the same for train and test
    TreePrint treePrint = op.testOptions.treePrint(tlpParams);

    if (testFilter != null) {
      if (testPath == null) {
        if (treebankPath == null) {
          throw new RuntimeException("No test treebank path specified...");
        } else {
          log.info("No test treebank path specified.  Using train path: \"" + treebankPath + "\"");
          testPath = treebankPath;
        }
      }
      testTreebank = tlpParams.testMemoryTreebank();
      testTreebank.loadPath(testPath, testFilter);
    }

    op.trainOptions.sisterSplitters = Generics.newHashSet(Arrays.asList(tlpParams.sisterSplitters()));

    // at this point we should be sure that op.tlpParams is
    // set appropriately (from command line, or from grammar file),
    // and will never change again.  We also set the tlpParams of the
    // LexicalizedParser instance to be the same object.  This is
    // redundancy that we probably should take out eventually.
    //
    // -- Roger

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